


Renascence

by vixiveri



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drama, Family Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Self-Indulgent, Self-Insert, So is the author, largely self-inflicted, oc is kind of a hot mess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-05-05 14:30:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14620653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vixiveri/pseuds/vixiveri
Summary: "Mafia Reformation" was never all that high on Tsunami's to-do list, but waking up from a dirt nap to a new twin brother and a world where spewing rainbow fire is the norm tends to shift a girl's priorities around. The megalomaniac with the red eye really isn't helping things.(Alternatively: Local Anxious Idiot plays with fire and tries not to accidentally end the world before she's sixteen.)





	1. Head-Heart Malfunction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > Head-heart malfunction  
>  Maybe it's not an ending  
>  Maybe it's a beginning.
> 
>   
> (local anxious idiot goes through the SI rite-of-passage: infancy) 

Death is messy.

Death is upsetting.

Death is, apparently, not as permanent of a state of being as she’s been led to believe.

She isn't sure what she'd been expecting, if she’s honest. Heaven? Hell? Some kind of afterlife, at least. Oblivion had occurred to her once or twice, she supposes, but it had never struck her as an appealing possibility. Concluding her existence by floating all alone in the void for an eternity is a little too nihilistic for her tastes. She'll pass, thanks.

Or, y'know. She would have. The funny thing about death is that it doesn’t ask for your opinions on it before it whisks you away.  

That being said, an eternity of nothingness probably would have been preferable to the disgusting and claustrophobic sensation of being pushed out of a complete stranger's very slimy _uterus_ , but _hey, what the hell,_ it beat eternal damnation.

(She really, really hoped this was not actually eternal damnation.)

When she'd said she'd rather have life after death, this was emphatically _not what she'd meant._

* * *

Her first few weeks of life are hazy and difficult to decipher in both the figurative and literal senses. Infant eyesight is useless garbage and all she is able to focus on in between her spontaneous naps is whatever is being held four inches from her face. Sometimes it is a brightly shaped plastic toy; other times, a slender hand.

She likes the hand, she thinks. It comes with a nice voice that coos at her with words she does not understand. It pats her kindly.

From time to time, she is nose to nose with what she initially assumes to be some kind of extraterrestrial screaming mutant. For several long weeks, she harbors some serious concerns about what kind of world she has been reborn into because last she checked raisins had neither faces nor the inclination to yell at top volume for hours on end.

Finally, her eyesight begins to strengthen and she realizes it's not quite an alien, despite its weird shape and tendency to get damp in odd places. It's just another baby. In her defense, an infant with a head equal in size to her own isn't something she has a lot of experience dealing with. It's face is wrinkled and blotchy and it is _so, so loud._

She wonders if they are siblings.

She does not want to be siblings with it, she thinks. It smells gross and its face is strange. She hopes she is cuter.

She can remember dying, from time to time. It wasn't nearly as cool a death as she'd been hoping for. She had lived to… what, seventeen? Eighteen?

She had hoped that she would last longer than that.

Her final memories are of a staircase rushing up to meet her face, she thinks. She doesn't remember the view all too well, what with all the tumbling. What she does remember is the panic that sat sharp and desperate low in her gut, a breathless scream, and a half-formed intention to strangle something.

Cause of death: cat. Miko was fat, orange, and feared neither gods nor men. In her attempts to not crush his attention-seeking paws under her feet, she'd tumbled face first down a flight of stairs and presumably broken her neck.

That was... so uncool. That was actively the farthest from cool she possibly could've gotten. Her final moments had been spent flailing her arms around frantically trying to tapdance around a pudgy kitty who wanted bellyrubs.

She is kind of glad she does not have to explain that to her dead ancestors in heaven.

She does not know how long it has been since she was born again, but she is beginning to understand that it's better not to think about things like heaven or hell anymore. She's pretty sure she is some kind of glitch in the system because as far as she can recall, she was not born with memories of her past life the first time around. More importantly, dwelling on it for too long has the unfortunate side effect of giving her the headache from the fifth ring of hell.

The headaches make thinking _hard_. Her normal newborn circadian rhythm is absolutely no help whatsoever; she fluctuates between awake and asleep too abruptly and it spooks the shit out of her.

She's never been good with handling fear in the first place and now, when she is barely over a foot and a half in length and the whole world is bigger and stronger than her, she has more reason to be terrified than ever. The part of her that is totally content to lie quiet and be touched by all the giant people around her is waging a constant war with the pieces of her that want to scream and thrash and run, run, run. On the bad days, she has trouble parsing which is which.

Her adult brain is so beyond scared sometimes that it's hard to do anything but lie perfectly still and hope that no one sees her.

Her infant brain thinks that's bullshit. Her infant brain knows that she is safe here with the big woman and her ugly little raisin of a sibling. It wants to survive, and to survive it must kick and scream until someone notices that it is there. It _refuses_ to be ignored.

It is easier to let her infant brain do the thinking for her, sometimes. The big woman seems happier when she does. She figures it might be a little weird to have one child that shrieks at uncomfortable volumes at most hours of the day and one that barely makes a peep until it's time for a diaper change, but the big woman manages.

She makes a concentrated effort not to slip through the cracks in her own head, but everything is just... it is _so much_. There is something incredibly soothing about the isolation and empty silence inside her head when her body is overloading, and she finds herself indulging in it more than she should.

In between her accidental naps and her purposeful blackouts, she begins to notice patterns in speech.

(She's pretty sure it's Japanese and its kind of galling to realize that the thing from her past life that's proving most useful so far is all the fucking anime she watched.)

Two words pop up with increasing frequency, and after a while she is able to decipher their meaning.

Her name is Tsunami. The raisin's name is Tsunayoshi. It becomes strange to hear one name without the other.

Having a sibling is... new. She hasn't decided if she likes it yet.

* * *

 

There is something wrong with her eyes.

Aesthetically, she means. She is still small enough that her vision isn't perfect, but she wore glasses once upon a time and she knows what astigmatism looks like. This is not that.

She and Tsunayoshi are big enough to be taken out of the house with their… with the woman who birthed them, now. They are packed in a double seated stroller with a sunroof and Tsunami is sure they make an adorable sight. People on the street stop to waggle their fingers at them and make funny faces, fishing for a laugh or a smile.

It makes her deeply uncomfortable. She feels watched all the time and the only thing she can bring herself to do is stare at them solemnly and hope her lack of reaction persuades them to stop sticking their tongues out like fucking idiots.

She starts to notice that they all stop and stare right back.

She locks gazes with wide-eyed strangers for long stretches of time and as much as she wants to be bratty and confrontational, she’s always the first to look away. All the bravado she manages to summon up dissolves like cotton candy in her chest when people who know nothing about her look at her as though she is something abnormal and unsettling.

Like... yeah, she is, she’s an undead freak of nature, but they don’t know that. They _can't_ know that.

Tsunayoshi is a godsend in these moments. He seems to be about as uncomfortable with the attention as Tsunami is, but unlike her, he has no understanding of the word 'self-control' and wears his emotions on his sleeves

(Her sleeves, to be specific. It's super fucking nasty and she wishes he would find a better victim.)

He cries every time. As the nearest warm body and functional meatshield, it becomes her solemn duty to be grabbed and tugged around by Tsunayoshi as he tries to yank her from her seatbelt and hug her like she is a stuffed toy. The result is all kinds of gross child fluid smeared all over her shirt and while it is absolutely one of the most disgusting sensations she has encountered (sans birth and the ongoing potty-training struggle), the noisy tears succeed in scaring off the gawkers nine times out of ten.

Tsunami does not figure out what the problem is until she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror during bath time. She and Tsunayoshi are bathed together in the bathroom sink, which is super weird to experience but also efficient, she supposes. There is a full size tub _right there_ , but the two of them are maybe a little too small still for that to be safe so she bears it in silence. She likes the sink better for now, anyways. It allows her to get close enough to the bathroom mirror to get a full, clear look at her new body.

It is the first time she has seen herself.

She is pleased to note that she is, like, completely fucking adorable.

Her cheeks are full and soft with baby fat and colored with a high flush from the steam. Her hair hasn't really grown in yet, but what little she has is honey brown and soft to the touch. Her mouth is cute and pink and even though this body is so, _so_ radically different from what she is used to…

She likes it. She likes it a whole lot.

Then she sees her eyes and wonders how on earth they were not the first thing she noticed.

' _What... the fuck is this,'_ she thinks initially, bewildered. Tsunayoshi's eyes are the same sweet shade of brown as his hair, similar to his mother's. Brown eyes were dominant, weren't they? If one of her genetic donors had brown eyes, then odds were that she would have them too.

The blazing neon orange eyes in the mirror take everything she ever learned in middle school about genetics and slam dunks it into the garbage disposal. Tsunami shifts a little closer to the mirror and— holy mother of  _shit_ , no, literally _what_ the fuck, this wasn’t normal _._

Tsunami used to be a cat owner. She is intimately familiar with all the weird, creepy bullshit that cat eyes do when exposed to flash or when seen at the right angle in near-darkness.

There is no conceivable reason why her pupils should be lighting up bright fucking yellow like a cat's in the night.

She shifts back and forth slightly, watching with horrified fascination as her pupils switch from black to floodlight and back again depending on the angle she tilts her head. No fucking wonder people were staring, this was weird as _hell_.

They remind her of something she'd seen in an anime once. The main character could switch into knockoff super saiyan mode and fly around shitting fire out of his mittens or something bizarre like that? His eyes would change colors and he would get super serious and competent. It had been one of the weirder shows she'd seen. Her point is, when he powered up his super special giant flamethrower thing, parts of his eye would light up like someone lit a literal fire behind them. She always thought it was the coolest shit.

Now that it's  _on her face_ , she is significantly less enthralled. Tsunami hates being stared at. She hates the attention, she hates the pressure, she hates being _seen_. With eyes like this, there isn't a chance in hell she is ever going to be unnoticeable ever again. The realization fills her with a familiar feeling of dread.

She has never stood out before.

She is not sure that she wants to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cross-posted from ffn, cleaning it up as i go
> 
> here for a good time, not an original time


	2. Step One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > Step one:  
>  Light me on fire.
> 
>   
> (local anxious idiot confronts daddy issues, realizes the obvious) 

Late one night while Tsunayoshi snuffles into his pillow, two-year-old Tsunami stares at the ceiling and thinks of parents.

(It's not like she has anything better to do— her favorite part of sleep is dreaming and she hasn't done that since she died.)

She'd had parents, once. A mom and a dad and an asshole of a cat.

Tsunami has parents now, too, but acknowledging that feels like betraying what she's left behind. Who had found her body, she wonders? Was there blood? Trying to imagine what her mother's reaction must have been like makes her stomach roll and her breath catch in her throat.

The woman who takes care of her now (‘Nana’, if those friendly old women across the street can be believed) is the polar opposite of the mother that she remembers.

Nana is gentle. Her hair is long and dark and she speaks softly, filling the whole house with a quiet kind of cheer. Her mother from Before had been a blonde force of nature who believed very strongly in the idea of 'tough love'. If she closes her eyes and concentrates, Tsunami thinks she can still feel the sting of knuckles grinding affectionately into her hair. Loud, deep laughter echoes in her ears— her father’s. He was never any help when her mother was like this, just sat back and laughed like they were prime entertainment. She misses him.

In this life, Tsunami's father is…

…is...

...Hold up.

Tsunami sits ramrod straight in the tiny bed she shares with her brother so fast her head spins. There is red-hot righteous indignation brewing in her stomach, bright and furious. She racks her brain for memories of any kind of man that could maybe be her father, but she comes up blank. She cannot recall a single instance of heavy laughter or warm hands. She can't think of _any_ caretakers who aren't Nana, actually, which rules out the possibility of her father really just being another mother. Hell, she's never even met Nana's family members. The woman has been well and truly alone for as long as Tsunami has known her.

Tsunami’s mommy issues aside, Nana is a ridiculously sweet woman. Even if Tsunami's limited language skills can only help her decipher about half of what Nana says, she can tell that the older woman genuinely loves her twins with all her heart. She tries her best to look after them both and provides a warm and loving environment that even skittish Tsunami has grown to feel safe in. Even if Tsunami can't quite clear the "mom" hurdle, she's grown very fond of her caretaker.

And some gaping _shithole_ had up and ditched her.

Thoroughly pissed off and feeling more than a little childish, Tsunami throws her body back into the soft mattress with a huff. Tsunayoshi's breathing stutters for a moment as the force jostles him awake, but in true child fashion he just rolls over and falls right back asleep. Tsunami is too busy focusing every ounce of her irritation into the open air— if she concentrates hard enough, maybe she can telepathically explode her sperm donor's brain? —to notice or be apologetic.

What a douchebag. If she ever meets him, she's going to kick him in the balls.

* * *

 (Ten thousand miles away, Sawada Iemitsu sneezes. There's some kind of pressure behind his eyes that feels different than the usual work-related headache. He hopes he is not getting sick.)

* * *

 To absolutely no one's shock or surprise, Tsunami does not understand the first thing about toddlers. This is fine, because toddlers do not seem to give a shit.

It is stressing her out.

For one thing, she's supposed to be playing the part of a guileless two year old who is absolutely _not_ bored to fucking tears with her brightly-colored plastic toys or her pathetically short arms or her fuzzy pink onesie.

Well, alright, she's getting kind of attached to that last one. Tsunami looks cute as heck with her tiny feet covered up by soft pastel fuzz and she refuses to be ashamed of it. The matching headband with the big, floppy bow is just the icing on the frilly pink cake and she loves it. Unfortunately for everyone around her, Tsunami cannot be pacified by her own adorable feetsies forever.

She's been trying hard to cut down on her Slips, capital ‘S’ for maximum importance. Blocking out the whole world and retreating to the dark empty space in her head is all well and good, but it isn’t doing her any favors when it comes to learning the language. Consequently, falling back on the instinctual part of her brain that knows how to act like an actual kid is off the table.

She learns to fake it.

Bullshitting childlike behavior comes easier when she is working off a template, so she watches her brother closely and mimics what he does. When Tsunayoshi grows tired of playing with his action figures or his Legos, Tsunami stops playing with them as well. Nana tries to coax her into playing dress-up and make-believe with her dolls, but for the most part Tsunami doesn't pay them much mind. They are fun to manipulate from time-to-time in a nostalgic sort of way (which trips her up because she is having flashbacks to her early childhood while she is _in_ her early childhood), but it is much easier to keep an eye on Tsunayoshi when she does not have to split her attention between him and the questionable fashion choices of a foot-tall plastic doll.

Also, she had never actually played with Gundams before and they are, like, _super_ fucking cool. Gundams are the highlight of her day.

Tsunayoshi seems glad to have the company, usually. Half the time she isn't really sure what he's babbling to her, but since Nana doesn't seem to know either she figures it's probably par for the course. Her grasp on the Japanese language is certainly better than it was even four weeks ago, but it is still far from perfect. Or, uh, passable.

Tsunami may be getting a lot better with her articulation and verb tenses, but flubbing every third word is embarrassing and frustrating so most of the time she just stays quiet. There will be time to chatter when the language isn't quite so foreign to her.

Because he seems to be literally incapable of shutting up, Tsunayoshi is unintentionally her greatest helper in this endeavor. Although his grammar is worse than even hers, he's such a bouncy little ray of sunshine that it's cute instead of annoying. He's finally grown out of his creepy little infant raisin face and now his cheeks are just a squishy and soft as hers are.

His puppy eyes are _lethal_ and she is _weak_.

"'n then the hero flewed in like whoosh and he, he hit the bad guy in the FACE!" Here, Tsunayoshi pauses and looks at her expectantly, wooden rectangle frozen in what she assumes is a battle position. Her own wooden block is triangle shaped and is consequently playing the villain that the hero is engaged in life-or-shadow-realm combat with. Tsunami isn't sure why they couldn't have played this with the conveniently humanoid action figures lying, like, right there, but she isn't about to argue pretend-fight logic with a two-year-old. Instead, she clears her throat and adopts her best menacing villain voice.

"AUGH," she bellows. This is enough for Tsunayoshi. She appreciates that.

"The bad guy falls over! The crowd goes wild! It's another home run for Captain Justice!" Tsunayoshi throws his arms in the air and teeters onto his back, giggling madly. Tsunami, who lost the plot to the epic block smackdown ten minutes ago when Captain Justice— who was named just now, on the spot —had to fly through an active volcano to save the dragon-warrior princess so she could return to her kingdom and eat dinner, feels vaguely charmed but mostly relieved that she is allowed to stop holding her villain triangle over her head. Apparently, that is the only way to correctly hold a villain in flight. Who knew.

Tsunayoshi's giggle train is nigh impossible to stop once it starts going. He rolls over in a fit before scrambling to his feet, crowing his excitement to the world with rosy cheeks and horrendously messy hair. Tsunami giggles a little bit along with him because he's _super fucking cute_ and his little onesie is so rumpled that he has to pause to straighten it back out so that he can move right. She gets up too, abandoning her blocks in favor of figuring out where he is running off to and whether or not she should go run off there after him.

It should chafe at her pride, probably, that she spends most of her time playing following-the-leader with a kid just barely out of diapers. It's a good thing she doesn't have a whole lot of pride left in her body. Nana believed in _breastfeeding_.

She likes boobs as much as the next person, but not like that. Never, ever like that, not now and maybe never again.

"Mama, mama, I-won-I-won-I-won-I-won!" He shrieks, bursting into the kitchen where Nana is stirring a pot of something that smells delicious. He wraps his arms around her leg and shimmies up her thigh like some kind of overexcited koala, chattering gleefully if unintelligibly about Captain Justice's 'totally awesome' superpowers and his incredible take-down of the dastardly villain. It sounds about twenty times more exciting in his retelling than it actually was.

Tsunami follows after him at a more sedate pace and mimics his clinging, tugging a fistful of Nana's loose pants close to her chest. Tsunayoshi is an energetic force of nature and that is all well and good, but she doesn't quite have the same boundless enthusiasm or zest for life. Also, forcing poor Nana to deal with more than just the one hyperactive toddler on her own is kind of a dick move.

Nana listens to Tsunayoshi's story with rapt attention and shows appropriate shock and horror when he tells her about the vicious block-eating monsters Captain Justice had to fight off, only to join him in his victorious cheering when he reveals that the hero beat them all up without breaking a sweat. Never once does her stirring rhythm so much as stutter, which is astonishing considering how much Tsunayoshi is moving around on her hip.

"'Nami was the bad guy this time! She made a really cool noise when I fighted her, like BWUGH, and then I beat her and won 'nd, and, um…" Tsunayoshi trails off, realizing that he has finally run out of story to tell. He looks at her imploringly. She, having absolutely _no_ idea what he's wanting her to say, redirects the conversation to the most pressing topic on her mind.

"...When's food, Mama?" She asks, getting as high up on her toes as she can to try to take a peek into the pot that Nana is so artfully mixing. She's about three feet too short to actually see anything but her own slightly warped reflection in the stainless steel.

She, too, is super fucking cute, she notes with satisfaction. Her eyes aren't quite as wide and round as her brothers and they are a little on the unsettling side, but her cheeks are squishy and plump. Her hair is the same warm shade as her brothers but, unlike his, it actually observes the laws of gravity and lies flat. Too flat, actually— she'd gotten nice and used to having wavy hair Before and the ease with which Nana could get a brush through her hair now makes her feel a little weird in her skin. It has a nice shine to it, at least.

She really would not mind being this adorable forever, if she's honest. It is a refreshing change from what she originally lived with, which were lanky teenage limbs that just wouldn't stop growing and a rather unfortunate tendency to break out in acne when the weather changed.

"'When will dinner be ready', Tsu-chan," Nana corrects gently. Tsunami takes a moment to roll the words over in her mouth and parrots them back obediently. Nana nitpicks her grammar a lot more than Tsunayoshi’s, presumably because Tsunami is the only twin who actually listens. Her baby brother has certain unshakable ideas about how words are supposed to work.

"When will dinner be ready, Mama?"

"Dinner!" Tsunayoshi chimes in hopefully, trying to scramble even further up Nana's side to do what Tsunami cannot and catch a glimpse of whatever feast his mother is brewing within. In one fluid motion, Nana scoops Tsunayoshi up to place him in a steadier position higher on her hip and then bounces him all the way back down until his feet are firmly back on the ground. He whines and tries in earnest to scramble back up, but all Nana has to do is put a finger on his nose and he freezes, crossing his eyes to try and figure out what she is doing.

Tsunami basks in the sudden silence and takes a mental note.

"Just a few more minutes, you two. But, you know…" Nana hums thoughtfully, tapping her chin and glancing down at them with a wicked gleam in her eyes. "Dirty kids don't get dinner. You better hurry and wash your hands or else you won't be able to have any!"

Mortally offended at the idea of _no dinner, oh shit_ , Tsunayoshi gasps and takes off like a shot towards the bathroom. Whatever is in that pot smells amazing and Tsunami will be damned if she lets her grubby little brother get his paws on it first. She is faster than he is when motivated and within seconds they are racing neck and neck down the hallway towards the stairs.

Their proximity turns out to be a good thing when gravity strikes. Tsunayoshi makes it all of four feet on the carpet before he trips over his own legs and spins out sideways into a wild tumble. Luckily, Tsunami is in the perfect position to cushion his fall and he faceplants into her hip and sends the both of them crashing to the floor. Her face squishes into Tsunayoshi's shoulder as her entire body skids out into a wide arc along the carpet.

Frick, _heck_ , major fucking ouch. If she doesn't have rug burn all up her side its going to be a goddamn miracle.

Tsunami lies dazed and spread eagle on the ground. There is half a two-year-old sprawled over her torso and a sharp knee digging into her ribcage like its trying to shank her to second death.

She contemplates movement.

' _Nah_ ,' she decides. Her head may be aching and about half an inch from the wall, but she's really rocking this whole "lie on the floor perfectly motionless" thing she's got going on and isn't really all that motivated to get up.

Tsunayoshi, with his face smashed into the carpet, is not quite so content. Eerily silent, he digs her knee even deeper into her ribcage (she releases a noise somewhere between a wheeze and a sob) and pulls himself upright. He slips off of her without a single noise, which is unusual enough that she raises her head to get a look at his face.

There's a big red spot on his forehead from where it bumped into the floor and, as Tsunami watches, he tentatively raises his hands to poke at it.

Still not a peep.

It feels like the calm before the storm. She's starting to freak out a little bit.

"...Um. Are you oka—?" Tsunami's question is strangled by a squeak of panic as the dam finally breaks and Tsunayoshi begins to sniffle, pawing at his head at looking her with a trembling lip and eyes like the world has just ended.

' _Fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuckfuckfuck_ ,' Tsunami screeches internally and her terror must be showing on her face because Tsunayoshi's expression crumples. His big brown eyes get wet and shiny and he opens his mouth to take in a huge gulp of air and oh gosh, oh no, Tsunami knows exactly what that means, shit shit shit shit _shit—_

Children are an unknown entity and completely beyond her skills as a functioning human being. Tsunami has no fucking idea what to do other than stand up and run screaming for the hills, but for whatever reason that strikes her as kind of a dick move. It's a fight or flight situation but she can't run and punching a two year old in the face seems counterproductive somehow, so she does the first thing that comes to mind and—

she boops him on the nose.

Tsunayoshi stills, caught in the middle of his massive inhale. His watery eyes cross to stare at her finger like he cannot believe that it's really there, his hands still hovering over his own forehead. Tsunami absolutely did not plan this far ahead and she is feeling the opposite of reassured by his silence. What now? Would he just start screaming if she stopped touching his nose? Is this his off button?

They sit frozen for several seconds, neither one knowing quite how to proceed. With no small amount of hesitation, Tsunayoshi uncrosses his eyes and stares at her with big blank owl eyes.

"...You're okay," she states slowly and then inches her finger off his nose like he will break if she moves too fast. To her surprise and relief, the tears and screams do not resume.

She feels like she has just unearthed a great and powerful secret.

Tsunayoshi brings his hands back down to his sides and keeps staring at her like he's completely checked out of planet earth. She's about to go get Nana because _oh no_ , maybe he really is concussed, when he bursts into maniacal giggles out of _fuckshit nowhere_ and scrambles back up to his feet like nothing had happened.

"You're so weird, nee-chan," he laughs, patting her on the head magnanimously before turning on a dime and scampering down the rest of the hallway and up the stairs on all fours. She stares after him, poleaxed.

Just… what.

Literally, just, what in the actual fuck.

...

The upstairs bathroom door opens.

She… she is not weird. He's weird! He was about to start raising hell two seconds ago and now he’s laughing and also _gone_ , how did that make her the weird one? Tsunami is not equipped for this. Toddlers are fucking strange as hell and she is so far beyond out of her element.

The sink turns on.

...That little shit is winning the race, goddammit all.

"I'm not _weird!_ " Tsunami yelps and scurries up the staircase after him, fully intent on washing her hands and then shoving her wet fingers down his neck in retribution.

She has never had a little brother before, Tsunami thinks. It is different from accepting a new mother or a new body or a new life simply because she has no basis for comparison. Siblings are new, uncharted territory. Even if she has fuck-all idea of what she's doing, she can't deny that she kind of likes figuring it out.

* * *

 When she and Tsuna ('Tsunayoshi' was such a pain in the ass to say all the time, honestly) are three, they meet their father. And their grandfather. And their grandfather's bodyguards.

It does not go well.

When the large blonde man bursts in through the front door with a bouquet of roses in his hands and a love song on his lips, Tsunami startles so badly that she trips and falls directly on her face in the middle of tag with Tsuna. He's close enough behind her that he stumbles hard on over her body and spends an almost impressive amount of time tripping and catching himself and tripping again. When he finally comes to a stop he is laid out flat on the floor, looking vaguely concussed. This isn't really anything new to Tsunami because lord knows that boy was a disaster with feet but the strange man in her house? Unknown element.

Tsunami scrambles back up to her feet and hauls Tsuna behind the sitting room table by his armpits because what the _fuck_. She's fairly certain Nana keeps the front door locked tight and this… this screaming blonde goliath just broke in like there hadn't even been anything in his way. Was this a home invasion? Were they being robbed? What the fuck was she supposed to do during a robbery?

Between the sudden shock that had probably just taken years off her life and the vaguely lyrical harpy screams that still have not stopped, Tsunami is more than a little rattled. Her heart beating too fast in her chest and she is frozen in place. There are procedures for this, she knows that she's supposed to do something if someone breaks into her house but she can't think and everything is so loud and so fast and oh, oh shit, is she having a heart attack?  _Can toddlers have heart attacks?_ Her name is Tsunami and she is about to die for the second time in three years, fucking _fantastic._

The system overload starts to become a little much for her to handle and, just for a moment, she feels herself Slip.

* * *

 It is quiet inside her head, like always. Good. Tsunami could use quiet.

The space around her is dark and endless and comfortingly familiar. It reminds her of outer space, or of being dead, or of curling under the blankets where the monsters can’t get her. There’s a dim glow like a cooling ember somewhere off in the distance that doesn’t offer much light, but comforts her all the same.

Tsunami’s wandered all over what she thinks of as her mindscape, using the glow as her north star to stay oriented in a place where the difference between up and down is open to interpretation. Once or twice she’s tried to get closer to the glow to investigate its source, but after a while she always ends up crashing face-first into what feels like a glass wall.

Questionable architecture of her mindscape aside… she should really wake up.

Something important is happening on the Outside and she needs to be around to experience it and react to it and also maybe save her life from home intruders.

...She isn't sure she cares. Slipping feels a lot like being on heavy sedatives and it's hard to remember why she was so afraid just seconds before. Tsunami has the distance and emotional clarity now to realize that she has probably just experienced the start of a panic attack.

It had felt like she was dying all over again.

She does not want to wake up and go back to that.

Sawada Tsunami has to be a responsible big sister now, though, so she sucks it up and does it anyways.

* * *

 Tsunami blinks twice and the world returns. It hits her like a slap in the face and she has to take a second to just breathe and re-calibrate. Her heart is still working overtime and she is suddenly so, _so_ annoyed with herself for blacking out at what could be a critical moment. Her gut is clenching with nausea, but she forces herself to focus through it.

The death warbles have stopped. Instead, Nana's laughter rings out through the house, bright and clear. Someone else is laughing with her, someone with a deep and deafening voice that reminds her of her father's except, no, not at all. Her father's laugh was warm like sunshine or soup on a cold day, but this? This is just fucking obnoxious.

Tsunayoshi is upright and tugging on their joined hands, impatient to get out of her grip (' _when did I grab his hand, I don't remember doing that,'_ ) and see what is happening in the next room over. She allows herself to be dragged out of their hiding spot and what she sees through the door frame immediately sets her back on edge.

The blonde man has Nana in a massive bear hug and they are twirling circles in the middle of the entrance hall. They both seem so absolutely ecstatic to see each other that it is jarring to her. The man is exactly as huge as he had seemed before and his pale hair is cut professionally short. In contrast to his spiffy haircut, the rest of him is…

Well. He’s kind of gross. His white wifebeater is slightly stained in some unidentified substance— grease or blood, mechanic or home-invading murderer —and his beard is more like scruff than anything else. When he opens his eyes to look at the two kids peering out from the doorway, his eyes are honey brown and elated.

They are the same shade as Tsuna's, she realizes. Is this… could this be their father? It would explain the hugging and the roses and the general lack of concern from anyone but her. Well, her and Tsuna.

"Mama?" Her brother tries cautiously, squeezing Tsunami's hand tightly. For being such a noisy kid, Tsuna gets awfully shy around strangers. Tsunami really hopes she isn't rubbing off on him. The blonde in the doorway slowly lowers Nana to her feet and she turns to them, smile wider than Tsunami has ever seen it.

"Tsu-kun, Tsu-chan, come say hi to your Papa!"

The man kneels and opens his arms wide, grinning from ear to ear. Tsunami's grip spasms for a moment. Tsuna jumps a little at the squeeze and stares between her and the beaming blonde man with open trepidation. When he ducks behind her instead of running to hug their ‘father’, she is filled with a vicious sense of smug satisfaction and affectionate pride. Clearly, Tsuna is aware of stranger danger.

And that’s all he is. A stranger. She glares at him with as much vitriol as she can muster, her need to assuage Tsuna’s fear handily overriding her own anxiety. Resisting the urge to do something drastic like bare her teeth or punch this dude in the nose is hard. It doesn't matter how warmly Nana is greeting him, he might as well be some random guy off the street.

He has not so much as visited them since their birth three years ago. He has left Nana on her own to raise twins. Nana clearly does not give a shit about any of this, but Tsunami isn't about to let some no-show fuckwad anywhere near her or Tsuna's person before she sees some fucking _grovelling_.

She decides to call him Jackass.

The only thing stopping her from marching up to Jackass right now and smashing her tiny child foot directly into his junk multiple times is her baby brother's small hand gripping hers solidly and the weight of his body pressing against her back. The moment Tsuna lets up, she is going to rush this stupid old man with all the power in her toddler body and _kick his ass_.

He must be able to read her thoughts on her face because his smile falters for a moment. To her alarm, it comes back twice as strong barely a second later before he moves forward to close the gap between them. She tries to reel back but there is a child behind her, shit, it's too late to dodge, maybe she can kick him in the face—?

Before she can make her thoughts a bloody reality, Jackass has scooped both her and Tsuna up in one fell swoop. Toddlers are small but they aren't _that_ small, and if she weren't so busy cursing his name to hell and back she might've been impressed. Her legs are pinned at too awkward of an angle to do anything more than shuffle feebly and she hates it, she hates it so fucking _much_. She's forced to release Tsuna's hand and grab two fistfuls of Jackass's shirt else she tip sideways and fall what feels like twenty feet to the ground.

Her breath stutters. Heights do not bother her quite so much as the idea of _falling_ from them does.

"Mama," Tsuna squeaks, clearly as alarmed at the sudden shift in vantage as she is. Nana laughs good-naturedly and reaches up to extract him from Jackass's grip, leaving each parent to carry one twin each. It would be the perfect moment for a picture if Tsunami wasn't so sure she looked like she was about to puke. She certainly felt the part. Safe in the familiar arms of his mother, Tsuna relaxes and looks up at the tall blonde man with open curiosity.

"There's someone else I want you two to meet," Jackass whispers conspiratorially. Tsuna's mouth opens into a perfect 'O' and he begins to look reluctantly excited for the surprise. He's a traitor to the cause, but Tsunami will forgive him because he is too young to know any better. She, on the other hand, has had her fill of meeting new people for the next four years, give or take.

Tsunami struggles a little in Jackass's grip to let him know she wants to get down _now_ , but all that does is make her feel like she's about to tumble out of his arms and she quickly gives it up.

She is going to have to use her words, isn't she. Eurgh.

"I want down," she hisses. "...please," she tacks on as an afterthought. Adults liked polite shit, right? She’s super cute, there's no reason why he shouldn't give her what she wants.

Jackass laughs straight from his belly and it's like being part of a small earthquake. Everything about this man is overpowered and no, she takes it back, Nana is _clearly_ flourishing on her own, none of them needed this guy in the picture anymore. She hopes he will leave quickly.

"Aw, so soon? But you haven't even been in the best spot yet!" Tsuna lets out a short noise of alarm, then Jackass's shirt is being wrenched from her hands. She swallows a shriek as she is lifted up and up and _up_ . Her only supports are the hands under her arms and the ground is getting farther and farther away and this is it, this is how she dies again, she is going to fall and be a little child-sized smear on the floor oh god oh _god she is going to murder this son of a bitch—_

—she Slips—

* * *

 There is a supernova burning like the sun and it is _blinding_. She squeezes her eyes shut too and rears back but the white is still searing through her eyelids and it _hurts_

* * *

 —and wrenches herself right back out again. She is barely gone for a second but that was apparently long enough for Jackass to finish settling her so that she is perched on his neck. Her legs are dangling limply over his shoulders so she folds them immediately— partly to make sure she cannot fall and partly to try and choke the ever loving _fuck_ out of this abrasive shitwad.

' _I want down_ ' does not mean ' _put me even higher, you fucking mountain_ '. She fists her hands more tightly than necessary in his hair and hangs on for dear life, seething.

Jackass is oddly still for a moment and she hopes it's because there is a distressed toddler on his neck trying to kill him and he's feeling some kind of regret or remorse. Her hopes are dashed when he just laughs once more— her whole body shakes with it —and gently loosens her deadlocked legs like they are toothpicks. Tsunami does not appreciate the demonstration of strength and tightens her grip in his hair.

"Let's go meet your grandfather," Nana suggests, bouncing Tsuna on her hip slightly in her excitement. Excitement happens to be the _exact opposite_ of the emotion Tsunami is feeling at the moment. Tsuna, at least, looks intrigued and put up no fuss as the two adults carry them into the backyard.

There is an old man with a moustache with a some frankly hideous tourist clothes sitting primly in one of their lawn chairs. From her ridiculously high vantage point, Tsunami can spy three other men in suits around the perimeter of her house, standing tall and alert.

The _fuck_.

Nana gently settles Tsuna back to his feet and Tsunami braces herself for similar treatment. Jackass reaches up and grip her firmly under the arms again and she squeezes her eyes shut, stiff as a board as he pulls her up and swings her through the air. She refuses to unfreeze or even open her eyes until she is completely sure that her feet are firmly on the ground.

As soon as her feet are back on the porch, Tsuna's tiny hand wraps around her clenched fist and pries it apart so he can wiggle his fingers between her own. It helps ground her in a different sense and she pulls in a deep, calming breath. If Jackass ever tries that again she is going to shove her fingers in his eyesockets, propriety be damned.

Tsunami turns to look at her… grandfather? Is that what Nana had said? She wonders if he is Nana's father or if they are related through the... less palatable party.

She really, really hopes he is Nana's father.

He leans over in his chair so that he is closer to eye-level with she and her twin. His mustache is extremely bushy close-up, she notes. Tsuna takes a half-step behind her to hide again and she lets him, shifting slightly so that she blocks more of him from view.

It's not very effective. Tsuna's spiky cloud of brown hair is too large and distinctive to fit entirely behind her back, but they try their best anyways.

The old man pulls back by inches, eyebrows flinching upwards. Tsunami is confused for a moment before she remembers her _bright fucking orange eyes_ with the pupils that glowed at certain angles. She tilts her head down and looks away because really, there's no need for her to give an old man a heart attack so soon after meeting him.

"Introduce yourselves," Nana prompts, patting Tsuna's floof of hair affectionately. He peers over Tsunami's shoulder, squeezing her hand so tight she can feel her bones grinding together.

"...M-my name's… um, Tsunayoshi. Y-you can… um, you can…" Tsuna stutters, growing more and more flustered by the second as his words get stuck in his throat. His palms are kind of gross and sweaty as he squeezes her hand once, twice, three more times in panic.

"You can call him Tsuna," Tsunami interjects. Her shoulders square. A wave of protectiveness is surging through her and she squeezes his hand right back, solid and firm. She feels for him. The crushing press of anxiety against her lungs is a feeling she's become intimately familiar with over the past few minutes ( _years_ ) and it fucking blows.

"And what's your name, little princess?" The old man's voice is rough, but it's also filled with warmth. His eyes are dark, she notes, darker than Tsuna's or even Nana's. There is something twinkling in them that Jackass's didn't quite have and she finds herself liking him more and more.

He is Nana's father, she is sure of it.

"Tsunami," she replies, a little hesitant. He is leaning closer, looking at her eyes with focus that surprises her in its intensity. He looks like… he looks like he is searching for something. She shifts, uncomfortable down to her bones but also unwilling to break character in front of her brother.

"Tsunami-chan," he hums. His scrutinizing gaze breaks into a wide, genial smile and she feels herself relax bit by bit. "You have very pretty eyes, Tsunami-chan."

...Oh.

Oh, no.

No one has ever complimented her eyes before.

Unwelcome comments about how 'unique' she was are common to her now. The people at the supermarket who stop Nana to coo at she and Tsuna mostly just cough awkwardly at her pupils and change the subject. Even Nana chooses to just avoid mentioning them.

Punching her directly in the eye socket might actually have had less of an effect. Blood is rushing to her face so fast that she gets dizzy and her cheeks feel so hot that she is half-convinced that someone has just straight turned up the sun. Tsuna is giggling at her, the traitor, and oh lord is Nana squealing, she's _squealing_. This is simultaneously the absolutely worst and the best, best, _best_ thing that's happened to Tsunami in a long time.

"Thankyouverymuch!" Tsunami tries for grateful and humbled but only manages some kind of quiet nasal scream that does not sound composed at all. She bites the inside of her cheek immediately after and curses her tiny, adorable voice to hell and back. She is so red in the face that she is glowing as bright as her eyes, she can fucking feel it.

It shouldn't be a big deal. This is such bullshit, she is so weak to flattery. Forgetting about her intentions to be Tsuna's unshakeable shield, Tsunami ducks her head and tries valiantly to control her furious blushing.

‘ _I love this old guy_ ,’ she thinks furiously. He is her new favorite person on the planet, right after her brother and Nana.

Sudden rush of affection aside, she is quite literally redder than a fucking stoplight and she is possessed by the need to run away and scream quietly in a corner until she calms the hell down. She does so abruptly, yanking Tsuna along behind her into the backyard. He stumbles a little bit, too caught up in his guffaws to concentrate on coordination. Its pretty rude to just up and leave her grandpa like that, if Tsunami's honest, but she can't find the will to give a shit.

She is three, she chants internally. She is allowed to be both easily flustered and rude as hell.

She powerwalks a little faster.

* * *

 When she calms down enough to look people in the eye again, her first order of business is to unleash unholy retribution on Tsuna for laughing at her in her time of peril. He shrieks with glee as he successfully evades her first lunge, but she is quick to catch up and lock him into an affectionate noogie. His unruly hair cushions him from most of the sting, but he wails dramatically anyways just to be a brat. It is equal parts irritating and endearing.

"Nee- _chan_ ," Tsuna whines, stretching her title out about four syllables longer than it really needs to be. His tiny fists papping against her arm do nothing to dissuade her from her thirst for vengeance.

"You laughed at me!"

He is, in fact, laughing at her right now.

"Y-your face," he wheezes out between his giggles. "You look like a big t'mato!"

"I DO NOT," she whisper-yells so hard that her voice cracks right in the middle and she flushes again in mortification. Tsuna goes boneless with the force of his giggles and slips out of her grip to puddle on the grass, more slime than boy. The temptation to sit on top of him until her dominance is re-established is almost too strong to ignore, but the muffled tittering of the adults by the backdoor reminds her that she has an audience.

She is a mature adult with mature adult reactions to things, goddammit. Just because her justified adult rage happens to look fucking adorable on a three year old girl does not mean she will stand for being made spectacle of.

Tsunami does the mature adult thing and walks away with her nose in the air. Her face is not bright red, she is just… it's just a healthy glow. It's fine and totally un-funny.

Desperate for a distraction, she looks around the yard. The neighbor's Chihuahua is sniffing around the back gate, so she makes a hasty beeline towards it. Three steps in, she remembers herself, and slows to a sedate walk like petting the dog had been her plan the whole time.

It has a little white collar on and it is even tinier than she is. It would be a criminal act not to go scratch behind its ears, clearly.

The dog's internal affection radar is apparently in perfect working order because the minute it catches sight of her, it is wiggling through the gate bars to trot towards her with a cute little puppy grin.

She runs her hands over it's fur with more than a little syrupy cooing. The dog's little tongue pokes out as it pants happily and that's it, she is sold. It is so soft and cute and it is hers now, she is adopting it into her home.

(Lord alive, does she fucking love dogs. She used to be a cat person, sure, but it is amazing how being indirectly murdered by a cat will open your eyes to the wonders of puppies. Plus, dogs didn’t do that tsundere shit. They looked after you and loved you freely. Cats just puked on your chemistry homework and sat in inconvenient places.)

"Tsuna, look!" Tsunami calls, because the only thing better than petting a dog is alerting other people that there is a dog nearby to pet. Tsuna, still laying in the grass where she left him, does not look nearly as excited at the prospect of doggies as she does. This is completely unacceptable.

She scoops the Chihuahua up in her arms and totters towards her brother. The arrangement is a little precarious because as small as the dog is, Tsunami is still just a little kid and not all that much bigger than it. Tsuna begins to look a little pale as she approaches on unsteady feet. She stops about three feet away from him and lets the wiggling Chihuahua down so it can snuffle its nose at Tsuna and open his eyes to the joys of teeny dog muzzles.

So yeah, okay, Tsunami is maybe a little over-excited about introducing her baby brother to foreign animals, but cute things have always been a chink in her armor. Case in point, her precious baby brother who she loves very much. His puffy cheeks are her kryptonite _._

"Say hi to the puppy," she urges. Tsuna shuffles backwards inch by inch with wide eyes. The dog is clearly unhappy with the total lack of petting happening right now and bounds up to her little brother to lick him in the face with gleeful abandon. Tsunami really hopes Nana has a camera out right now because it is fucking _adorable_.

Then Tsuna bursts into tears and she is forced to concede that maybe, just maybe, dog petting may not be for everyone. It burns her deep to admit that. She's a little offended, honestly. Sighing hard, she picks the dog back up and trudges all the way back to the fence. Setting it down, she almost goes in for a tummy rub anyways. The steady backtrack of her brother wailing stays her hand.

The things she does for him, honestly.

"Go home, puppy," she commands, stance firm and finger pointing resolutely out to the other side of the gate. The Chihuahua's little ears flatten against its skull and she feels her resolve wavering, but Tsuna is clearly afraid of dogs and she has to prioritize her sibling over her potential new best friend. Even if the look on its little face is utterly heartbreaking and she feels like scum.

"Go on," she repeats, chest heavy. It finally obeys and she sighs again, mourning the death of her bright, dog-filled future.

When she turns back around to comfort her brother, he is on fire.

...

She blinks.

Nothing changes.

At first she thinks it's some kind of trick of the light, but then he cries even harder and it _flares_ and-

Her head goes completely blank.

Her baby brother, in the _ten seconds_ she has had her back turned, has spontaneously combusted into bright orange fire without moving a fucking inch. Her baby brother, who is named Tsunayoshi. Tsunayoshi is on fire. There is _orange fire_ coming from _Tsunayoshi_.

Hysterical giggles are already welling up in her throat. Jackass is rushing out to scoop him up but Tsunami is too weak in the knees to do much of anything, much less help. She isn't even sure _how_ she would help. Other than being incredibly distressed, Tsunayoshi doesn't seem to be in pain and that is _weird_ to her because _he is on fire_.

Her breath catches. Jackass seems to be touching him just fine. There is no scorched grass where Tsuna sat. All signs point to Tsunayoshi not actually burning.

The signs can go fuck themselves because he is _very clearly_ still on fire.

Tsunami is hit with the most intense sense of deja vu she has ever felt in either of her lives. Something about this sight is tripping all kinds of alarm bells in her head and it isn't just how her twin has suddenly lit up like he's the fucking sun.

What is it about this sight that's so familiar to her?

Her sweet, fashion-challenged grandpa who minutes ago successfully bought her affection with flattery approaches her adorable and lovable twin brother and pokes him in the forehead with two fingers. His fingers are _also_ on fire, absolutely amazing. She feels like she has seen this before, but that's _fucking insane_. She would remember something like that.

...She remembers something like that.

It is on the tip of her tongue.

As soon as her grandfather's flaming hands make contact, all orange fire ceases to burn and Tsuna just wilts like the life has been sucked out of him.

' _Oh_ ,' Tsunami recalls distantly. She wonders if this is what out-of-body-experiences are like. ' _I know where I've seen this._ '

…

_Fuck._

When she Slips, she doesn't even fight it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dun dun dun, or something
> 
> if you read this on ffn first, you may have notice a couple of things have changed. don't even worry about it.


	3. Step Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > Step two:  
> Walk clean away
> 
>   
> (local anxious idiot touches balls and avoids responsibility) 

Tsunami takes one look at her Slipspace and sits down, hard. Her eyes squeeze shut and she massages the bridge of her nose like it's somehow going to help the headache she is developing while _inside her own head_.

"What the fuck," she whispers. What the hell, it's not like there's anyone around around to hear her anyways. She cups her hands around her mouth and, as loudly as she can, hollers, "WHAT THE FUCK." In English, even, because her grasp of the Japanese language has yet to extend to curse words and she needs something a little stronger than 'poopy' to fully express her feelings.

Save for the soft orange glow of her north star, her slipspace has always been dark. _Always_. It was one of its charm points.

Now? There are not one, but _two_ supernova suns hanging suspended in the darkness. They’re fucking huge and, yeah, they’re burning too. Of course.

"Everything is on fire. Why is everything always on _fire_ ," she mutters to herself, borderline hysteric. Clearly, igniting her little brother was not enough for the universe.

Which, speaking of, she is not even remotely sure how to process the fact that her stupid, noisy baby brother is actually the protagonist of an anime. An anime she is now living in. An anime about the fucking mafia (that her brother is going to _lead_ , what the shit) and superpowers and goddamn time travel. Real, actual, honest-to-god time travel. She feels a little faint.

Less than an hour ago, she attempted to assassinate Sawada Iemitsu with her tiny little toddler legs. He’s probably shot more people than she's met in her life.

She once put an icecube down Tsuna's back just to watch him shriek and try to finagle it out of his onesie. He was going to grow up to be a crime lord. _The_ crime lord, even.

She buries her face in her hands and _screams._

All in all, Tsunami is feeling really, really stupid right now. Her brother's name is Tsunayoshi, they were birthed by a woman named Nana, and their blonde father recently returned from an unexplained absence with an old man who needed _bodyguards._ It's been a long time since she has has anything to do with Katekyo Hitman Reborn, but not _that_ long. She'll admit that 'I was reincarnated into anime' is a really fucking weird thing to assume right off the bat, but honestly. All the clues had been _right there_.

It's probably a good thing she Slipped when she did. Had her mindscape not allowed her to separate herself from the majority of her negative emotions, she's fairly certain she'd be doing something more drastic than shrieking into her own palms, like laughing or crying or hyperventilating herself back into an early grave.

...She needs to wake up.

The man she'd thought of as a sweet old grandpa was a real life fucking mafia boss and he was, like, four feet away from her. Tsunami didn't want to think about what he might assume if he caught sight of her completely blanking out, and he _would_ see her. She may not have burst into Dying Will Flames in the middle of the freaking lawn, sure, but she had no idea what she looked like when she zoned out. She could be drooling or something. Whatever it was, it probably wasn't typical toddler behavior and the last thing she needed was _Vongola Nono_ to be _looking at her._

Tsunami peeks through her fingers.

...She should also maybe address this whole two-suns thing. Having unexplained burning shit in her mindscape wasn’t something she should just ignore, especially if she isn't the one who put it there.

(Which, yeah, having a mindscape in the first place kind of makes more sense now. She was trying not to think about it because avoiding difficult subjects is one of her greatest life skills, but it was nice to know that she wasn’t going crazy. It was just a side-effect of the fire magic. Of course. Idiot.)

Unlike her north star, she is able to approach the two new lights with no obstructions. This close up, she can see that they're… weird. Weirder than floating mind fire usually is, she means.

(And what is her life anymore, that mind fire is something she has to fucking deal with. Lord alive.)

They’re burning almost too brightly for her to look at directly and Tsunami narrows her eyes to slits to try and make out some of the details.

“Sunglasses would be nice,” she mutters, shadowing her eyes with a hand to try and mitigate the glare.

The light abruptly dims to manageable levels and it takes Tsunami a moment to realize that it’s because an enormous pair of movie-star sunglasses have materialized on the bridge of her nose.

Right, mindscape. Reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram and all that. Newly emboldened by her sudden ability to see, she steps closer to the two lights.

It’s the first time she’s been able to get close enough to one of these to see them in detail. They look like glass balls, both roughly the size as her head and perfectly spherical, hanging motionless in the air about hip-height. She waves her hands above and below the one on her left. No strings, no heat, no weird tingling sensations. She kneels down to get a closer look.

Fire burns inside each of them, tinted sepia through her sunglasses. The one on the left is solid orange and swirls around the ball in smooth, controlled circles. It feels weird to ascribe age to fake fire she made up in her head, but something about the steady circulation and almost hypnotic quality of the fire inside strikes her as being very old.

In contrast, the one on the right is wild, chaotic, full of life. It’s a deeper orange with brighter sparks of tangerine coursing through it like glitter. It almost seems like there’s too much of it for the ball its trapped in and it pulses wildly, licking around the inner perimeter of the glass like it’s searching for any weakness in the glass it can exploit in order to escape.

A little spooked, Tsunami scoots away from it.

Finding out that anime is real after all has knocked her a little off-balance, but she’s not an idiot. There’s obviously some kind of correspondence between the balls of fire and the two flame-active mafioso outside. She just… doesn’t know what it is. They remind her of suns, or maybe snowglobes.

“Star balls,” she decides. If she recalled correctly, a kitsune’s starball was supposed to hold parts of their soul and energy. That was her whole magic floating orb situation in a nutshell, if she was guessing correctly.

Also, ‘star balls’ sounded a lot cooler and more shonen than ‘the magic nightlights I see inside my head’.

Genre-necessitated fancy names aside, she has no idea what to do with either one of these. Smashing them seems like a bad idea, if only because she has no idea what they do. Tsunami's life is anime now. She can't just break suspicious shit anymore, she might end up accidentally cursing her entire bloodline or something.

"Screw it," she sighs, pushing up her sunglasses so she can rub at her eyes. If she is really lucky, the issue will resolve itself while she's back in the outside world working herself into a fucking panic attack. Someone is bound to have noticed her blanking out by now.

When she presses her hand against nearest star ball to help haul herself back upright, it’s cold to the touch as if the fire inside were only an illusion.

She only has time to note that it’s the icing on the cake of weird experiences her whole day has been before the glass under her fingers gives with a sharp pop and something pulls. She stumbles palm-first into the swirling orange flame within and-

no no no no, bad, too much too much too much

she's burning, there is pain going all the way up her arm up her neck in her head, her brain is boiling inside her skull everything is red red red red she needs to run she needs to escape she needs to get away from all this fucking fire she needs to—

—yank back—

* * *

 She wakes up.

For a long moment, the only thing Tsunami can do is stare at the back of her eyelids. The sudden transition from _burning alive_ to cool and whole and unharmed is a little too much for her to wrap her head around all at once. She focuses on her breathing.

Tsunami isn't sure what the hell just happened, but she won't be forgetting the feeling of her skin melting any time soon. Once her head stops swimming and she feels like a person again, she opens her eyes. The sunlight seems much so harsher than it was before she Slipped and her eyes immediately water against it. God, but those sunglasses would be nice right about now. She raises a hand to wipe them dry, wincing.

Her throat is _aching_.

The first thing Tsunami does once her vision readjusts is look for Tsuna. If he can spontaneously combust within ten seconds of her looking away from him, lord only knows what he's gotten up to in the full minute (five? ten?) she's been out of it.

He is fast asleep in Nana's arms, his thumb in his mouth and his body thankfully extinguished. Nana rocks him gently, humming softly. She glances up and-

They lock eyes.

Tsunami is expecting Nana to be at least a little relieved that her second child has surfaced from her drooling coma, but no such emotion is present on her face. Nana just smiles warmly at her like nothing unusual has happened.

Tsunami would pay a lot of money to figure out how she is pulling that off, because if she isn't mistaken, the kid being cradled in Nana's arms was doing a pretty good Human Torch imitation not even five minutes previous. She'd like to think _that_ qualified as unusual, if nothing else.

Her grandfather— Vongola Nono, jesus shit —is settling himself gingerly back into the lawn chair he'd been sat in before this debacle had begun. He looks a little frayed around the edges, which she figures is probably par for the course. Sealing flames can't be that easy to pull off or everyone would be doing it.

The ground under her backside suddenly shifts around and Tsunami realizes with a sharp jolt of fear that she’s not actually on the ground at all. There is about a six foot drop between her and the grass and the only thing stopping her screams is the persistent ache in her throat. Her legs curl in tighter to her body and she blindly flails for the first thing within reach, which is an unfortunately familiar white wifebeater. She isn't in much of a position to be picky, though, and she bunches as much of it as she can manage in her tiny fists.

"Oh-ho! Finally decided to join us in the world of the living, hmm?" Jackass— _Iemitsu_ —laughs, and the explosive force of it jostles her dangerously. She very, very carefully does not let herself react. That sentence has _several_ different meanings, none of which Iemitsu should have been able to figure out just from a brief space-out on her part.

"You fell asleep in the grass, princess," he elaborates, misconstruing her owlish look as one of confusion. Internally, she breathes a sigh of relief. Passing out is still wildly fucking bad but its a lot easier to explain away that sudden onset catatonia. "Must've been tired, huh?"

She makes an affirmative noise and tucks her face against his shirt. It smells vaguely of sweat and something else thick and chemical that she cannot identify. It's far from the most comfortable position, but she needs to think and world is distracting.

First off, Tsunami has zero fucking clue what to make of Sawada Iemitsu anymore. It was easier when he was just some nameless dickbag that up and left his family for some unknown reason, but now that she knows who he is, it's a little more complicated. On one hand, she now has an entire shopping list full of reasons to hate him, which features gems like 'chronic liar', 'irresponsible deadbeat', and 'generally just an asshole to his kid'.

On the other hand, she knows that having him around too often would paint a big red target on her entire family's back for every mafioso with a grudge to come and shoot at. He literally _could not_ be at home with Nana and keep them safe at the same time. It was a lose-lose situation for everyone involved.

She still thinks he's a jackass for manhandling her like a sack of potatoes, though.

Second on her list, her grandfather had people murdered and extorted for a living. Tsunami is having a really hard time wrapping her head around that if only because the Ninth was so… _cute_. He's the textbook example of a sweet old man with his big poofy mustache and sparkling brown eyes. He looks like he would be more at home on a golf course than a shooting range, honestly.

There went her theory about him being Nana's dad, at any rate. Or Iemitsu's, actually, if she is remembering correctly. Is he even technically her grandfather? She tables the subject for now. It’s not like she is going to be seeing much of him until she is older, so there is going to be plenty of time to get a feel for him in ten years when he is scoping out her little brother for potential boss-hood.

Which brings her to her final issue. She has about eleven or twelve years of prophetic knowledge concerning a lot of shit she wants absolutely nothing to do with and _zero_ idea how to use it. It'd be one thing if she was in Italy or somehow already involved with the mafia, but this? This was Namimori, Japan. The most exciting thing that was going to happen here for the next decade was Hibari Kyoya's rise to military dictatorship, and he could pull that off just fine without any interference on her part.

None of that changed the fact that she was probably going to end up smack dab in the middle of a criminal syndicate before she turned twenty.

Tsunami has to take a few slow, measured breaths to combat her rising anxiety. She's up shit creek and the only paddle she has might as well be made of cooked pasta for how useful it is to her right now.

"Oh!" There's a soft screech of wood against wood and then the ruffling of fabrics. "I should check on lunch, shouldn't I?" Nana titters.

Tsunami doesn't bother raising her head as she patters off. When she's nose deep in shirt like this, it's easy to forget that the world is still happening around her. Rejoining it doesn't sound like something she's up for quite yet.

There's a long silence.

"...Nana seems very lively," Her grandfather— the Ninth— _Timoteo_ offers, somewhat amused. Iemitsu laughs lowly in agreement and the two of them fall back into tense silence.

Timoteo sighs.

"Is she asleep again?" There is a bone-deep weariness in his voice that sets her on edge and— oh, shit, wait, they’re talking about _her_. She forces herself to remain still and relaxed when Iemitsu tilts her slightly to check her face and breathing, even when his shirt begins slipping from her fingers. Hell if she knows what's going on here, but there's a churning low in her gut that warns her to play along.

She listens.

"Out like a light," Iemitsu confirms. There's another weird pause during which he tries to maneuver her back into her original position. Tsunami wants nothing more than screech at top volume and scuttle down his body to the sweet, solid ground, but her curiosity is overriding her panic instinct. Nonetheless, it is taking a considerable amount of effort on her part to keep her face peaceful and her muscles lax.

"I suppose you're wondering why I sealed your son's flames."

"No, actually," Iemitsu hums. He shifts her around once again. "Tsuna's not going to be involved with us. Being a civilian but having that big of a flame signature is only going to attract trouble, so I get it. What I don't understand is why you had to _stop_ sealing Tsunami."

' _In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight.'_

If her heart rate jacks up, Iemitsu is going to _feel it_. Tsunami focuses harder on her breathing.

' _In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight.'_

"You likely noticed," Timoteo's voice is very, very soft. "But your daughter... did not seem to appreciate being touched with Sky Flames."

Tsunami has fuck-all idea what that's supposed to mean, but she does concede that 'did not seem to appreciate' being approached with _soulfire_ sounds a lot like her. Underneath her, Iemitsu stills.

"Yeah, I... picked up on that. What happened?" He asks slowly. Tsunami really hopes she didn't try to frogkick her grandfather in the face or anything while he wasn't looking. Motor control is completely out of her hands when she Slips.

' _In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight.'_

"When I first saw Tsunami, I fully intended to seal her as soon as possible. Her, ah, _eye situation_ , it's very…" Timoteo pauses. "Well. A glow like that usually only occurs when an exceptional amount of flames are at play."

"Were there not?"

"Not particularly, no. Still, I chose to continue in the name of being thorough, which is where I encountered the issue at hand. When I tried to seal her, something… _pulled_ , for lack of a better phrase."

' _IN FOR FOUR, HOLD FOR SEVEN, OUT FOR EIGHT. IN FOR FOUR, HOLD FOR SEVEN, OUT FOR EIGHT.'_

She's not freaking out. She is totally calm. Still waters having nothing on her— she is the epitome of cool and collected and _not freaking out_.

"Pulled? What does that mean?" Iemitsu asked, voice grave.

_Tsunami_ had pulled. There'd been flames climbing up her arms and the only thing she could think to do was yank back and get out of the fucking fire— the fire, she realizes, that was actually coming from _The Ninth._

' _The star balls_ ,' she registers. If the fire was from her grandfather trying to seal her flames and it had come out from the star ball she had been touching, then was that… there were more than just the two lights in her Slipspace. Were all of those _people?_

Her head hurt.

"Honestly, I'm not sure. It's possible that I could isolate the cause, given time, but I'm hesitant to risk it. Even the small flame I introduced was enough to knock her out for several minutes. There's no telling what side effects a repeat performance may have."

"She definitely took it worse than Tsuna," Iemitsu said. There is an emotion behind his voice that Tsunami can't quite pinpoint, but it leaves her feeling distinctly off-kilter and a little warm. She thinks it may be something like... concern? "Poor kiddo screamed like she was dying."

Hearing that from Iemitsu, who has been in the unique position of knowing what a death screech actually sounds like, is a little sobering. It explains the burning in her throat, at least. Hopefully none of the neighbors heard and decided to call the police, because she really doesn't want a Namimori Law Enforcement vs Actual Mafiosi deathmatch going down in her backyard.

"She may be flame sensitive," Timoteo muses. The wood of the porch chair creaks a bit, like he's leaning into it. Iemitsu makes a noncommittal hum low in his throat and shifts her up just a little higher, but Tsunami is too deep in thought to notice much. She shouldn't worry, right? The only person in this entire goddamn city who gave a single shit about the constant explosions and the naked kid streaking down the highway with his head on fire was going to be Irie Shoichi, who was too tiny to call the cops anyways. Things were probably fine.

"...Keep an eye on her," Timoteo advises. This jerks her back into the conversation at hand more effectively than a splash of water in the face because being watched by the mafia is literally the last thing she wants to be dealing with. Tsunami doesn't have to open her eyes to know that Iemitsu is frowning hardcore— she can feel it in the way his shoulders tighten and his breathing slows into a controlled sigh. It isn't hard to figure out why. Luckily for her, there is a whole list of reasons why Iemitsu really _can't_ keep an eye on her, first and foremost being that he has an entire subfamily to run.

Hell, she's not complaining. The idea of being _watched_ is enough to send shivers down her spine. Being watched by the _fucking mafia_ , especially now that she knows whats up? Nightmare fuel.

All she'd gotten was the watered down, audience-friendly version of what the criminal underworld was like with the addition of literal goddamn superpowers and even that has her feeling like something in her chest has withered and died.

Human experimentation was a thing that people condoned around here. Like actual fucking _hell_ she was going to sit around and let those assholes try and pick her brain.

Before Iemitsu can argue or agree or whatever his plan was, the back door slides open with a soft squeal.

"Lunch is ready!" Nana calls, chipper as ever. "Oh, is Tsu-chan asleep again?" The door squeaks again and suddenly Tsunami is being gently untangled from Iemitsu's shirt and relocated to Nana's hip. Being hauled through the air still sucks balls even with her eyes closed, she notes, screaming internally. Carefully limp, Tsunami allows her head to flop against Nana's shoulder and offers no resistance when the woman begins shuffling her limbs around into optimum carrying position. "I'll put her down with Tsu-kun. Food is on the table when you're ready!"

Nana is infinitely more comfortable to fake-snooze on than Iemitsu, so much so that Tsunami is sorely tempted to just conk out for real. Unfortunately, her head refuses to shut the fuck up for more than two seconds at a time.

Forcing a breathing pattern does wonders for keeping her heart rate under control enough for her to think about things without the constant nagging fear of death by cardiac arrest, so she keeps it up even as Nana carts her back to her shared room with Tsuna.

_Flame sensitive_. God, but she really fucking hopes not. Her life was gearing up to be shit enough without adding a double weakness to the world’s weapon of choice. Being touched with fire sure as hell _hurt_ , at any rate.

(It is completely fucking baffling to her that that’s not supposed to happen. Tsunami does not understand why being pap-slapped in the cranium with burning handmeat would ever be anything other than horrifically painful, but then again, she’s dealing with magic. 'Supernatural Rainbow Fire 101' wasn’t exactly one of the classes she took in high school, what does she know?)

Nana lays Tsunami down on her bed and an attempt on her life is immediately made by her squirming little brother. Tsuna does not 'cuddle'. Tsuna establishes dominance in the only way he knows how, which is by spreading as much of his body as he possibly can over as much ground as he can cover. In the three seconds since Nana has put her down, he has managed to roll over almost completely on top of her and shove his left arm directly into her mouth.

As soon as Nana leaves the room and closes the door, she smacks it right back out. Tsunami knows exactly where that boy's arms have been today and she wants no part of it in her body, thanks. She gets about ten seconds to enjoy her freedom before he makes another valiant attempt to usurp her place as the Alpha Twin by smooshing her cheek with his grubby fingers. Experience has taught her that his is probably the best she's gonna get, so she leaves it be. It's not like she isn't used to this by now.

Tsunami finally opens her eyes and glances down to see how much danger she's in of being drooled on. Tsuna is well and truly knocked out and is snoring softly with his mouth wide open— oh, there it goes, all down her shoulder. Lovely.

‘ _He really is adorable_ ,’ she thinks fondly, then balks at her own thoughts because he is actively slobbering on her person right now.

That shouldn't be charming.

...It is  _super_ charming.

She kind of wants to reach down and pinch his cute little cheeks, but he has her arms pinned down under his weight and also they are kind of slick with child-spittle. This is gross, she reminds herself. She does not enjoy it when babies try to cover her in facial fluids.

' _Sawada Tsunayoshi is drooling on me_ ,' she thinks, scrunching her nose. Fuck it all, that didn't help. He's _still_ cuter than a button and she's pathetically weak to his poofy hair and tiny little grabby hands. She's trying to have an existential crisis about her future here, goddamnit.

Tsunami can stress with the best of them, but it is weirdly difficult to summon a single shit about what's to come when she's immobilized by a sleeping child. Something about the full-body crush of weight is squeezing out the anxiety in her like a lemon in a juicer.

Tsuna’s fingers twitch against her cheek and his legs twitch like he's a dog having a dream. She bites back a snort.

Tsunami knows a losing battle when she sees one. She is also, like, completely fucking pro at putting off issues until they grow completely out of control and come back to eat her ass alive, so she tables her crisis for another day and settles in for a sound snooze.

It’s not like her problems aren’t going still going to be around when she wakes up. Better to tackle them later, when she is well rested. Maybe give herself a day or two to process first. A week? Within the next few years, for sure.

* * *

 An hour and a half later after Tsuna wakes her up by sitting on her till she wheezes, Nana informs them over late lunch that their Papa has left to go take care of some business.

"Papa's… gone?" Tsuna asks, frowning deeply. He sulks deep in his highchair and unleashes his fabled puppy eyes on his unsuspecting tablemates. Tsunami wilts a little under the crushing force of cute. "He di'nt say bye."

"He came to say goodbye, but you two were just so cute he couldn't bear to wake you up!" she squeals, looking thoroughly lovestruck. Tsunami pulls a face and resists the urge to touch the cold patch of drying drool on her shoulder. She isn't sure what's so cute about seeing one child try to drown the other in spit, but... hell, she'd been charmed too. She lets it go and settles for just being relieved that Iemitsu and Timoteo are out of her hair for the time being.

Tsuna, unsatisfied with Nana's explanation, turns the full force of his bambi eyes to her instead.

"... _Guh_ ," she wheezes in lieu of actual words, because _holy shit_. Forget the fucking X-Burner— if he could weaponize those big sad peepers, half the world would melt into a puddle of starry-eyed goo. Tsunami is absolutely defenseless against the puppy eyes and damn if her brother doesn't know it.

"He di'nt say _bye_." He repeats, eyes shimmering slightly with tears and lower lip pushed out just enough to look pathetic. She is _weak_.

"I'll kick 'im real hard for you," she promises. Nana hums disapprovingly, but her admonishments about unladylike behavior fall on deaf ears. Tsuna is smiling again, appeased at the thought of violent retribution. All traces of tears and sadness have been wiped from his face and she's getting the distinct impression that she's just been played. She doesn't even _mind_.

Tsunami can't help but feel like she is creating a monster. A sweet, chubby cheeked darling of a monster, but a harbinger of destruction nonetheless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> why confront your problems when you could  
> yknow  
> not do that


	4. Never Stop

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > Never stop, it's how we ride  
>  Comin' up until we die  
>  I don't wanna go to school  
>  I just fr e sh a voca do
> 
>   
> (local anxious idiot makes friends, touches balls part two) 

Time passes.

The next three years of Tsunami's life are a little on the anti-climactic side. She's guilty of expecting everything to change after she discovered the truth of her situation, as if excitement and purpose were going to magically fall into her lap and give her some kind of direction.

It was a dumb thought, but a nice one all the same. If she wants to figure out her new path in life, then she is getting the impression that she is going to have to do it on her own. Disgusting. She was balls at the whole 'future planning' thing the first time around when the biggest thing she had to worry about was how she was supposed to afford wifi. Unsurprisingly, adding magic mafia nonsense into the mix is doing her no favors.

To give herself the illusion of productivity, Tsunami takes to poking around her Slipspace at night before she sleeps. She spends the time wandering around in the dark looking for… anything, really. Her north star had stopped appearing after the Ninth's visit, which confirmed her suspicions that it had belonged to Tsuna. It's still out there in the darkness somewhere— dimmed, but hardly extinguished. She knows this because every so often she slams face-first into its glass and has to stop exploring for a while to blink the stars out of her eyes.

Iemitsu's and Timoteo's star balls are still _around_ , but they’re little more than pinpricks in the darkness now. Wander as she might, she can’t ever seem to get much closer to them. The best explanation she can figure is that the two of them are just too far away physically for her to be able to see them in any detail now.

Time passes.

Iemitsu visits a little more often nowadays, which, considering his previous average was about once every three years, isn't really saying much. He manages to swing by on major occasions like his anniversary and she and Tsuna's birthday and, to her eternal dismay, never fails to announce himself in the same way. Tsunami has serious concerns for how Nana is going to react if someone ever breaks in their house for real. She hardly even jumps when Iemitsu barrels in out of fuckshit nowhere with roses in hand. Tsuna, at least, screams like a tiny humanoid tea kettle and tries his damndest to scurry under the nearest piece of furniture.

'' _Flame sensitive' my ass,'_ she hisses internally the first time Iemitsu comes home after the Ninth's visit. He is loud and sudden like a bomb in the front hall and it scares the  _everloving fuck_ out of her once again. She can sense him coming, sure, but only if she's in her Slipspace when his star ball rockets into blinding view.

Whatever power this is, it's functionally useless. Unfortunately, short of spending the rest of her life in a vegetable coma on the off chance that she might see him coming for once, she isn't sure how to work around it.

Time _passes_.

Nana decides that Tsuna and Tsunami are now too big to wear onesies, which Tsunami not-so-privately thinks is fucking ridiculous. No one is ever too old for onesies, especially the nice ones with the soft fur on the inside that Nana buys them for the winter months. She mourns their loss with much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

In exchange, Nana begins to let them pick and choose their own clothes. She reserves final veto power and, having seen some of the shit Tsuna tries to go for, this is for the best. Tsunami's baby brother shows an alarming affinity for fur coats and hoodies in eye-searing orange, while she herself hoards hair clips like they’re going out of style.

For the most part, Nana lets her have whatever she picks out. She puts her foot down when it comes to the tiny shorts which, okay, sure. Tsunami can concede that she’s maybe still too little for them, but damn if she doesn’t miss the breeze on her thighs. To compensate, she leans hard into her baby-faced cuteness and dresses almost exclusively in pastel overalls and sundresses.

The bra situation is much simpler. Little kids didn't need bras, and at first being in public without one on sent shivers up and down her spine. Nowadays, she dreads the age she has to return to them because _holy shit_ , she can breathe like... _all the time_ now. She can scratch her ribs and nothing can stop her! Laying face-down on the floor only hurts because there's usually a mildly concussed kid on her back! It is arguably more exciting to her than finding out she has knockoff superpowers, if only because she is able to enjoy the benefits immediately and without hassle.

Overall, she's feeling pretty...okay? Nothing is exploding, she doesn't have to breastfeed, and Tsuna isn't impersonating a molotov cocktail with hair anymore. There's a metric fuckton of future bullshit to sort out, but there are just under ten _entire years_ to deal with it all.

"I am six," she reminds herself in her Slipspace, wandering around with her arms outstretched (' _sneak up on me now, you glass motherfucker'_ ). Tsunami spends an embarrassing amount of time in here just talking to herself while she walks. It’s nice to not need to worry about who might be listening. "What the hell am I supposed to do, even? Walk up to the Italian mafia and tell them to fuck off? I’m _six_."

It sounds like an excuse. It _is_ an excuse, but putting shit off is the only coping mechanism she has, so she lets worries about the future slip from her mind and puts more effort into mentally coordinating her next outfit.

Then, her monotony breaks.

* * *

 

Tsunami is not unused to the churning, anxious energy that comes with the first day of school. She's only experienced it a dozen-odd times over her lifetime-and-a-half, after all. To be honest, by the time Nana packs them into the car early in the morning Tsunami is downright _zen_.

(And, hell, that really should have been the first indicator that something was going to go wrong. She is a ball of lowkey paranoia on her  _best_ days.)

Tsuna, on the other hand, is about as far from zen as he's ever been.

Her little brother is trying valiantly to become one with his booster seat the entire ride over, tiny hands balled into fists and slouched so far down that Tsunami has serious concerns that he's going to up and melt right through the harness onto the floor. Every so often, his legs kick around with nervous energy that he can't keep bottled up and she has to dodge out of range a time or two. The mighty frown on his face broadcasts his displeasure with the situation, but honestly, he's about as intimidating as a grumpy kitten. He is cute when he pouts, but Tsunami gets the impression that telling him so is not going to help anything. She takes a different approach.

"Hey, Tsuna-fish," Tsunami prods both verbally and physically. Her arms are too short to reach far enough to wiggle her fingers all the way into his sides, so she settles for tapping staccato beats on his arm. The shit-face she receives when he looks up is _magnificent_.

" _What._ "

"Whatcha makin' that face for?" She didn't think it possible, but Tsuna finds a way to slide even _further_ down his seat. Half his face has vanished under his shirt collar and all she can see are a pair of big brown eyes glaring at her petulantly.

"...nna go…" He mumbles, words obscured partly by his pout and partly by the giant wad of shirt he is trying to turtle into. Fuck, but he's precious.

"Tsu- _na_ ," she whines, letting the syllables draw on an on until Tsuna pops his head out of his shirt and speaks clearly, if for no other reason than to make her shut up.

"I _said_ , I don't wanna go!"

"Me neither," Tsunami shrugs, and Tsuna seems a little blindsided by her easy agreement. "Mama says we have to, though. Why're you _scared?_ "

"'m not scared!" He huffs, offended. Tsunami is not fooled. His hands have yet to unclench and though he's sitting a little straighter now, his shoulders are almost up to his ears. Nana muffles a giggle behind her hand from the driver's seat but offers no other commentary.

Tsunami chooses not to say anything to her brother's blatant lying. She just sets her jaw and pins him with a hard stare. Tsuna makes a solid effort at holding her gaze, but the longer she goes without blinking the more uncomfortable he gets. When he begins to fidget, she goes in for the killing blow.

"Tsu- _naaaaaa_ ," she drones, poking at his arm. After less than three seconds of her tuneless whining, he is bright red and fully upright in his seat, slapping her hands away with extreme prejudice.

"Stop it!"

"Only if you tell me what's wrong, Tsu- _naaaaaaaa!_ "

If his feet could reach the floor, Tsunami's pretty sure Tsuna'd be stomping them right now. It takes real effort on her part to keep her voice from showing how close she is from busting a gut laughing at her brother's tiny, ineffective stink-face.

Finally, Tsuna folds. His crumbling will is reflected in his body language as he sags lifelessly against his seatbelt, looking for all the world like he's been attacked by some kind of soul-sucking demon.

"'m not _scared_ ," he repeats mulishly. Tsunami sucks in another breath to restart her droning, but Tsuna quickly finishes his statement before she has the chance to let loose. "...What if ever'body's really mean?"

"Then I'll beat them up," she promises solemnly. It's not an empty oath. Tsunami is fully and totally willing to throw down with a bunch of little kids in defense of her brother, because if she knew anything at all it was that he was going to _need_ it. Tsuna wasn't the fastest or bravest kid on the block. He screamed when he got nervous, cried when he was mad, and despite his endless chatter in the safety of their home, he stuttered something fierce in front of strangers. He was a prime target for bullying, and Tsunami is in the unique position to know for a fact that he is going to get the shit beat out of him unless something intervenes. Nominally, herself.

Nana takes this moment to interject, catching Tsunami's eye through the rearview mirror. What little she can see of her face is soft and amused, but there is a glint of something hard in her eyes.

"Now, now, Tsu-chan," she chastises gently. "You shouldn't hurt the other kids! If someone's mean to you, I want you go find a teacher or tell Mama, okay?"

Tsunami blinks slowly.

Like hell she will. She’s been through the public school system and adults aren’t good for shit when it comes to bullying. Still, for the sake of appeasing Nana and staying out of immediate trouble, Tsunami nods obediently. If she is pouting, well, she is six. Six year olds sulk, right?

Tsuna copies her, though his nod is more relieved than obstinate. Slowly, his hands begin to unclench. Tsunami takes the opportunity to snatch the one closest to her. His palms are sweaty and it's nasty as hell, but at this point she's pretty used to Tsuna's snot, sweat, and tears ending up all over her person so she doesn't mind so much. He makes a loud noise of embarrassment, still raw from all her ribbing, and tries to jerk his hand out of her grip. Tough shit for him, because she is clingy when she's nervous and the paranoia is starting to settle back in.

She was not lying when she said she'd beat up a six year old for Tsuna. Tsunami would deck that hypothetical motherfucker in a second, no questions asked. People paid _lots of attention_ to violent kids, but that was fine. Totally fine. She was completely prepared for attention, she was a grown-ass woman. A grown-ass woman who was fully ready to sucker punch a child in the face.

Tsunami slides down low in her seat, trying her hardest to become one with her booster seat. Tsuna kicks his legs next to her, calm as a clam.  

She's so, _so_ incredibly fucked.

* * *

 

Namimori Elementary is a reasonably sized establishment with two, _maybe_ three floors. It's been painted slightly off-white and there are clusters of floor-to-ceiling windows every six feet or so. There are a few cherry blossom trees spaced evenly along the sidewalks lining the perimeter. Not all of them have bloomed quite yet, but they are well on their way.

There is a small crowd of people by the door that swells slowly as each new student disengages from their parents to walk inside. As the Sawada unit draws nearer to the school doors, Nana imparts some final words of wisdom.

"Don't be afraid to ask question if you don't understand something, alright? And play nice with the other kids! Oh, and don't get too dirty during play-time! Don't forget to be polite to your teachers and make a lot of friends and… and…." Nana presses a hand to her mouth and breathes in deeply, eyes suspiciously wet.

Shit— _Fuck,_ is she crying?

Tsunami reels back an entire step, hands moving frantically in the air as Tsuna makes his tea kettle noise and tugs at his mother's skirt. Nana is for real going to cry, heck no, Tsunami isn't here for this shit.

"Mama, _no_ —"

"Mama please stop it—"

"My little babies are growing up so fast!" Nana wails, wiping at her eyes delicately. Tsunami is supremely uncomfortable with all of this and, for the life of her, cannot think of a single thing to say. Forgoing words, she shuffles closer and stiffly pats Nana on the arm. There, there. Please stop.

"Mama," Tsuna starts, concern clear in his voice but Nana just shakes her head and takes in another deep breath, straightening her back.

"Tsu-chan, keep Tsu-kun out of trouble, won't you? And Tsu-kun, you'll protect your sister, right?"

The twins trade a look. Nana… probably has things a little backwards. If anything, it's going to be Tsuna pulling his sister out of whatever hot water she's landed herself in trying to look out for him and they both know it. Regardless, they reassure her in their own ways that they've understood her intent.

"Yes, Ma'am." Tsuna nods.

"Mmkay." Tsunami says, avoiding eye contact.

She gets a stern look for her flippancy, but Tsunami doesn't pay it any mind. She’s starting to notice that Nana has some sort of expectation that she display shit like _manners_ and _poise_. Tsunami is polite when it counts, and that's about all the fucks she can muster to give. Besides, if things keep going at the rate they are now, she and Tsuna are going to be late to the first day of their first year of school.

"Go on then," Nana sniffles. Tsunami grabs Tsuna by the hand and _bolts_ before Nana really does start crying again. The neighborhood mom gang has already smelled fresh blood and are beginning to close ranks. Nana will be fine.

"Nami-nee!" Tsuna yelps, stumbling slightly over perfectly even ground in his rush to keep up with her. She slows, but refuses to stop until they are indoors and well out of Nana's sight. One can never be too careful with first-time mothers.

"Sorry, Tsuna-fish," she snickers, not all that sorry. "I gotta keep you out of trouble, remember?"

As one, they peek out one of the many windows at the scene they have fled and flinch back just as fast. Crying parents. Crying parents _everywhere._ Tsuna shivers.

"...Lets just go," he mumbles, tugging on their conjoined hands. Tsunami turns and glances over her shoulder at the sea of children milling about, some with adults and some, like them, without. Hardly anyone is taller than about four feet and...

Oh.

Oh, gosh.

"Oh _no_." Her grip tightens for a moment and Tsuna jumps, looking at her with concern and a touch of panic.

"Nami-nee?"

Tsunami presses a hand to her chest and wills her heart to just fucking chill for like, two seconds, _please_.

' _Oh shit_ ,' she wheezes internally. ' _Oh_ fuck _, they're all adorable.'_

* * *

 

' _Children are monsters and I am in hell._ '

Sawada Tsunami is a sucker for a squishy face and damn it all, it is ruining her. Doubled over her table with her head tucked in the crook of her elbow, she can almost pretend like the chaotic hell of foreign fluids and screechy gremlins is happening to someone who is not her. School has only been going for a week and she is already prepared to throw in the towel, fuck all of this. Spending half a decade only really interacting with two people has left her completely unready to deal with crowds, let alone crowds of obnoxious kids. Cute faces be damned, they’re _so loud_.

After Tsuna had exited his screaming infant stage, she had taken his newfound volume control for granted. Now, surrounded by twenty-odd six-year-old kids all clamoring over one another to be heard and seen, she pines bitterly for the days when all she had to put up with was one moderately squeaky child.

The boy in question had given up on trying to make her crawl out of her self-imposed silence shell around day three and now sits in the chair next to her, coloring diligently. There is about an hour carved out of every day before recess where the whole class sits down for arts and crafts. It's about the only time time of the school day where everyone is allowed to socialize freely and, consequently, it is Tsunami's least favorite hour to be awake and alive. Tsuna uses it to draw pictures of whatever catches his fancy, either too nervous or too caught up in his art to join the rest of the kids. Tsunami can't tell; she's too busy blocking out the world. Headphones would be a fucking blessing right about now.

"Aino-sensei is looking," Tsuna warns, kicking lightly at her shins. Grumbling under her breath about life's injustices, Tsunami hauls herself upright and steals one of Tsuna's crayons to scribble mindlessly on her own sheet of colorful paper. The class's warden is a bright and chipper twenty-something with soft pink hair and a penchant for dragging quiet students into the thick of things to make them open up. Having been a victim of this, Tsunami had been only mildly annoyed with the woman up until she'd tried the same thing on Tsuna. Poor kid had almost _cried_. Tsunami still doesn't have the vocabulary to communicate her exact feelings towards her teacher, but they're far from pleasant.

"Hey, um, Suzume-chan," she calls loudly to the girl sitting at the table-desk behind her as Aino-sensei walked by. "D'you have any yellow crayons I can use?" See, sensei, look. She's a social creature, damn it.

Suzume— and was that her first name or her last name? Fuck, she has no idea —turns slightly at the sound of her name and jumps something fierce when she catches Tsunami's eyes. The dark-haired girl fumbles for a moment before jerkily shoving the coveted yellow crayon into Tsunami's hands.

"H-here you g- _o_!" Suzume's voice cracks on the last word and she whips back around, ears reddening. Tsunami stares at her new acquisition in bewilderment. That was... weird. Eyebrows raised, she glances at Tsuna, who only shrugs before returning to his drawing. Well. Alright then.

"Kay, she's with somebody else now," Tsuna greenlights a few minutes later, craning his neck to get a good view.

 _Thump_.

Tsunami's head hits her desk with a dull noise and she sighs out slowly through her nose. Twenty more minutes to go.

" _Nami!_ " her brother hisses abruptly, kicking at her legs with renewed vigor.

"Wh— _ow!_ What?!" she yelps, shooting ramrod straight and drawing her legs up closer to her body to bring them out of range. If she has shoe prints on her white socks, there is going to be a murder. Tsuna is focused on something just over her shoulder and when she registers the cornered expression on his face, she turns as well.

Shit. Shit _fucking_ damn it all.

Aino-sensei is guiding a little girl to their table with a hand on her back and a wide, pearly smile on her lips. In contrast, the little girl looks nothing short of mutinous. Her arms cross in front of her and her tiny face is set into a truly majestic bitchface, the likes of which Tsunami has only ever seen on grown women.

"Sawada-kun, Sawada-chan," Aino-sensei begins, eyes closing under the force of her smile. "I'm going to have Kurokawa-chan sit with you two for a while, alright? Play nice!" Then she is gone, returning to her patrol looking significantly more satisfied than before.

There's an awkward stretch of silence between the three of them as they look at each other, unsure of how to proceed.

Behind them, someone bursts into wet, shrieky tears. All three of them flinch at the same time.

"...So... what'd you do?" Tsunami asks finally, kicking out the chair next to her. As far as she's concerned, anyone as disgusted as she is by the noise level is probably pretty okay. The girl sits down with a flounce, face still screwed up.

"What makes you think I did something?" she bites, turning her head sharply. Tsunami eyes her for a few seconds before giving her biggest sigh of the day and melting back into her prone position. Mutual distaste for the screaming aside, she has to remember that she is still talking to a moody six-year-old. Eleven in the morning is way too early to be dealing with this. She props her chin on her arms and levels the girl with the most unimpressed stare she can muster until the girl glances over at her.

"People who don't talk go with people who _do_ talk," Tsunami nods towards the front of the room where the majority of the noise is originating from. "People who get in trouble come over here." Their own half of the room is sparsely populated, but the few not tangled in the crayon party up front are coloring away diligently nonetheless. Tsunami knows the names of maybe three of them, but they're well behaved and focused. The rowdiest troublemakers usually get sentenced to time-out over here specifically because it's nigh-impossible to rope these kids into noisy shenanigans. There's a sense of wordless kinship between all of them that she has grown to appreciate.

"Aino-sensei thinks the loud kids'll make the quiet ones talk more," Tsuna explains hesitantly, crayon stilling. Tsunami looks up at him in surprise. This is the first stranger he's willingly initiated conversation with all week.

Hell, this is the first stranger _she's_ willingly initiated conversation with all week. There is... probably a connection there. Dammit.

Guilt twinges in her chest. For once, her little brother has been following her lead instead of the other way around. Navigating school has put him way out of his comfort zone, and he's been letting her call the shots while he figures out where he fits in. And what has she been doing? She's been hiding in the back of the room and refusing to talk to anyone, that's what. _Hell_ , but she's a bad role model.

The new girl glares at the wall darkly for a more seconds. Slowly, she lowers her eyes to stare at the floor.

"...Tatsuzo Ryoma said my socks were ugly, so I called him a stupid monkey," she mumbles defensively, embarrassed but completely unapologetic. Tsunami can't help the snort that escapes her before she can muffle it into her arm and receives a direct eye-contact glare for her slip. The girl's scowl deepens.

Fuckin' adorbs. Tsunami can appreciate a kid who doesn’t take any shit.

"What'd you say your name was again?" Tsunami asks, lifting her head a little higher. She takes stock of the girl in front of her, paying a little more attention to things that aren't her (legendary, iconic, awe-inspiring) bitch-face. Her hair is dark, wavy, and chopped rather severely around her chin. Tsunami can't quite decide if her eyes are grey or maybe just a really washed-out purple, narrowed into unfriendly slits as they are. Her cheeks are nowhere near as puffy as Tsuna's or even Tsunami's, but the pouty snarl she's pulling is pushing them out enough to be heart-meltingly precious anyways.

The girl raises her chin and looks Tsunami up and down assessingly. If her intention is to make Tsunami feel like she's being judged at the stand, then she is doing an excellent job. Something about the look on her face and way she talks is making a part of Tsunami’s brain perk up and pay attention, but she can’t quite put her finger on why.

"I didn’t. I’m Kurokawa Hana. Who're you?"

Ah.

Tsunami kicks at Tsuna's legs under the table to answer for her because if she tries to talk right now, she's probably going to say something embarrassing and weird like ‘you have a nice glare’ or ‘I loved you in that anime I watched before I, yknow, died and jumped dimensions’.

"U-um! I'm Sawada Tsunay… uh, just Tsuna," her brother tries with a slight stammer. He is looking at her for reassurance or guidance or _something_ , she doesn't know, she's having trouble paying attention to him. Her world is being rocked.

How is she supposed to feel? _Kurokawa Hana_. This is the first canon character she has ever met. Tsuna doesn’t count, mostly because by the time she realized who he has she had already seen him puke, be naked, and puke _while_ naked so the magic was already gone.

It’s what she imagines meeting a celebrity would be like, only the celebrity is only famous in an alternate reality and also they are six years old and have knobby little knees and… no, this simile has completely escaped her. It doesn't even matter. Kurokawa Hana is adorable and Tsunami is going to be her friend if it kills her.

"This is my sister, Nami. Um. Tsunami?" Tsuna's voice is reaching that specific pitch that, like a child screaming in fear, activates her big sister mode like she’s some kind of sleeper agent. Tsunami shakes herself back into reality and takes a second to replay what he said.

"Yeah, uh, Nami's fine," she shrugs. Nearly two decades speaking English in a western society had pretty much ruined her. All the cultural stuff about honorifics and polite name usage has flown right over her head. What does she care if a six-year-old wants to call her by her first name?

(Kurokawa Hana bites her lip. She isn't exactly sure what she's supposed to do in this situation and, well… there _are_ two Sawadas. It's not like they mind. And it'd be weird if she was using nicknames for them and they just called her 'Kurokawa', right? People might get the wrong idea.)

She tells them this imperiously, back straight and ankles crossed. Kurokawa Hana has an awful lot of airs and graces for a six-year-old, Tsunami notes. Nana would probably love her, troublemaking sass notwithstanding. She isn't sure if she's genuinely impressed because Hana just does a great job of seeming better than everyone else or if it's just the starstruck wonder talking.

"So… Hana-chan then?" Tsunami's feet are kicking something fierce under the table. There's an energy in her bones she can't quite seem to get out and she's more awake and engaged then she's been all week.

(Behind her, Tsuna sounds out the syllables of Hana's name carefully, trying to practice so he won't trip over them in the future. She’s the first real girl he’s ever talked to and he doesn’t want to make a fool of himself.)

Tsunami is going to hold on to this child and _never let go_ , so help her God.

* * *

 

Six months later, she begins to rethink this plan.

Tsunami swings her legs in wide, lazy circles. Her head is propped up on her folded arms and the only thing between her and a nap is the steady arguing of her two favorite people over her head. There is a fly on her paper and she doesn't have the requisite number of fucks left in her body to do anything about it.

"...ave to write them like _this_ so that people know they're TV show titles," Hana's authoritative voice barks commands somewhere on her left. The fly crawls jerky circles around Tsunami's essay, stopping every few millimeters to rub its little feelers together.

"But I just said it was a show right there!" Tsuna argues back. Papers rustle. "See! ' _Gundam, the TV show that I watch.'_ "

Can flies plot? Tsunami thinks this one looks like it's plotting. Something about the way it rubs its little hands together and twitches at every sudden noise.

"I _know,_ but you still have to do it. Those're the rules, my mom said so," Hana insists, clearly frustrated with the resistance she is encountering.

Tsunami's fly crawls a few more inches to her right. She wonders about the logistics of keeping a fly as a pet. Tsuna will never consent to having a dog and it _hurts_ her inside. Flies and other gross bug-things are all she has left.

"Thats dumb, though. Why do they hafta to see it all slanty if I tell them what it is _right there_ ," Tsuna taps a line on his paper for emphasis.

The fly buzzes away.

" _Don't leave meeee_ ," Tsunami whines, drawing out her words several beats longer than they have any business being. She can't handle listening to a six year old lecture another about proper MLA citation without some kind of distraction, she'll _die_. Again. Permanently, even.

Tsuna kicks her sharply under the table at the same time that Hana whacks her over the head with a thin ream of notebook paper. Tsunami appreciates that they are bonding over the various ways they can cause her physical and emotional pain, but she also lowkey wants to go back to six months ago when they all barely spoke.

"Stop sleeping! Aino-sensei wants us to read these to the whole class tomorrow and you aren't even working on it!" Hana chastises. She makes a move for the paper partially pinned under Tsunami's arm.

"'m not sleeping," Tsunami corrects. It hasn’t been for lack of trying, though. "And I've written plenty."

"You only wrote three sentences!" Tsuna contradicts immediately. Indignant, he digs his little fingers into her ribs and Tsunami folds like wet paper, muffling a squeal. He is a dirty, filthy traitor to the cause and once again it is only his cute face that saves him from annihilation. It is not, however, enough to save him from sweet, sweet revenge.

Hana is used to the cycle of poke-and-be-poked by now and doesn't even bat an eyelash when Tsunami lunges for Tsuna's armpits. She takes the opportunity for what it is and plucks Tsunami's unguarded essay off the desk.

"' _When I grow up, I want to be a—_ " Hana squints and brings the paper closer to her face. Tsuna slaps Tsunami's hands away from his body with the speed and ease of a practiced professional. "...Hang on, what's a ...mortician?"

"Funeral director," Tsunami says cheerfully. Tsuna recoils in disgust and Hana sighs through her nose, looking for all the world like a woman thrice her age.

"You're such a freak," she complains. "Anyways. ' _Morticians only have to deal with people who are already dead. I feel this is a good match for me._ ' And that's it. Sawada Tsunami—"

"—Hana, no, you sound like my mom—"

"—you could at least  _try!_ "

Tsunami whines and flops back on the table because yes, okay, Hana is totally right. She isn't even taking this remotely seriously. But honestly, what is she supposed to say?

' _When I grow up, I want to be still alive and not a criminal. In the event that this last thing is impossible, I want to at least be a really cool criminal that the other criminals don't mess with because they're too scared of my little brother, who will probably be the coolest criminal of them all. Don't arrest me, please.'_

Not happening. Besides, for all that it's a profession that she chose completely at random, Tsunami finds the idea of being a mortician kind of charming in an ironic way. She'd be a zombie directing funerals. The circle of stupidity would be complete.

"I'm _sorry_ ," she pulls the word out and out and out and doesn't stop until Tsuna claps a hand over her mouth. She licks it. He makes a face but refuses to budge. Tsunami can feel her power as an older sibling draining away a little more every day as Tsuna gets more and more savvy to her ways. She'll have to up the ante and get creative soon.

"Stop doing that," he commands, glaring with all the force he can muster. Tsunami makes a grand show of rolling her eyes, but nods. Tsuna removes his palm and wipes it off on her skirt because he's a nasty little shit.

"You're gonna get a bad grade," Hana warns, waving the paper for emphasis. Tsunami shrugs and plucks her assignment out of the other girl's grip, settling it back safely under her arms. She has literally forty thousand other things in her life to worry about. A bad grade on a 'what I wanna be' assignment in her first year of school doesn't even make the list.

"What about you?" she challenges, voice muffled by her arms. "What're you writing about?"

Hana spins her paper around and slides it to the middle of the table so all three of them can see. Her writing is large but impeccably neat, and she has taken the time to add an illustration of what Tsunami assumes is her in a business suit surrounded by piles of cash.

"Oh, good idea," Tsunami congratulates and grabs a fistful of crayons so she can add some tasteful additions to her own paper. She's thinking a full-color spread of her embalming a corpse, or maybe the open casket funeral of a burn victim.

"C-E-O," Tsuna says carefully.

"It means I'm going to run my own company," Hana boasts, crossing her legs and straightening her back.

"...Huh." Her little brother is clearly unimpressed. Judging from the scowl Hana's face twists into, she has noticed and is equally as unamused. "That's cool, too, I think."

"She's gonna be super rich and famous and stuff," Tsunami adds, recognizing how utterly fucking boring running a business sounds to a six year old who still makes an effort to watch cartoons on saturday mornings.

(She says 'makes an effort' because for all his enthusiasm about shonen anime, Tsuna is terrible at getting up in the mornings. As someone who shares a room with him and routinely tries her best to sleep till noon, Tsunami appreciates this.)

"Oh!" Looking significantly more engaged, Tsuna reassess Hana's paper. "That fits you, yeah! 'nd then I can beat up all the mean people who talk about you on TV!"

Hana opens her mouth, looking smug, but then closes it again as she turns Tsuna's words over in her head. Her mouth twists like she's torn between flattery and exasperation.

"Yeah. You. You'll beat them up." Hana doesn't bother trying to sound convinced.

"Haha, what," Tsunami chimes in, flat and bland. She doesn't even elect to look up from her coloring. "You can't even beat _me_ up."

"Not _yet_. See, see, look,"

Tsunami's crayon stills in her hands and she has to lean back to properly appreciate the image her brother has shoved not two inches from her nose. It's a full-color spread of him as a giant robot, shooting multi-colored lasers from both fists. The city is on fire and there are weird purple things flying around in the air. Tsunami thinks they may be rhinos? Some kind of quadruped for sure.

"Dude, nice. Hana can use her money to make you a cyborg!"

" _Yes_ ," Tsuna crows, looking up at Hana with big hopeful eyes. Tsunami is once again forced to admire how incredibly powerful Hana's aversion to precious babyfaces is when she doesn't even bat an eyelid.

"Absolutely not."

As Tsuna tries his best to wheedle a hypothetical loan of several million yen out of the other girl, Tsunami returns to her coloring. By the time Hana remembers Tsunami's bullshitted essay, it'll probably be too late.

* * *

 

Spoiler alert: Tsuna isn't the one to get in the first fight.

When she is seven years old, Sawada Tsunami loses her damn mind.

Or, well. She wishes she does. Pleading temporary insanity would be a nice and convenient way to justify her actions to herself, but she's self-aware enough to know that it would just be self-delusion.

It goes like this:

Kurokawa Hana is a brilliant, wonderful girl with a sharp mind and a sharper tongue. Kurokawa Hana is also, on occasion, a huge fucking moron who should maybe not walk around poking hornet's nests but—

No. No, that's not fair at all. Hana was just standing up to a bully and Tsunami is projecting her frustration with herself onto targets that don't deserve it.

She's off topic.

Tatsuzo Ryoma has always been someone that Tsunami is, at the very least, peripherally aware of. This is largely because he is a whole head larger than her, aggressive, and not afraid to speak whatever is on his mind no matter how cruel or uncalled for it may be. Tsunami isn't exactly his biggest fan, but Hana seemed to have something out for him on a personal level after that first week of school when he'd called her socks ugly. Tsuna is scared of him, but Tsuna is scared of a whole laundry list of of stupid shit so she hadn't paid it much mind.

It starts with a boy in the class across the hall, a tiny little dark-haired thing who pings off enough of Tsunami's cuteness radars that she can't help but feel her heart ache a little when she starts noticing Tatsuzo going after him. To be fair, Tatsuzo has gone after nearly everyone at some point (he's called her cheeto face once or twice and she's ashamed of how long it took her to stop blushing) so she doesn't pay it much mind.

That day, Tsunami and Hana are sitting on the hard plastic lip of the sandpit, arguing the merits of shoujo manga while Tsuna tries and fails to drown them out by constructing a shoddy sandcastle just behind them.

(And, sidenote, Hana can shove it where the sun don't shine. Shoujo manga is objectively garbage and should not under any circumstances be considered fine literature. Highkey misogyny and weird messages about personal agency aside, it’s the early 2000s and just about everything is still sporting that bug-eyed Clannad art style. It gives her hives.)

The kid is making sandcastles, too, nearby but far enough away that he's clearly respecting their space.

Then, in incredibly cliche schoolyard bully fashion, Tatsuzo strolls up and puts his foot straight through the kid's watchtower.

The move is sudden and violent enough that it startles all of them. Tatsuzo's a jackass, for sure, but he usually just sticks to making fun of people. This is the first time he's decided to actually get destructive.

Tsunami is suddenly very, very aware of just how much bigger than all of them he is. She should find an adult, she thinks, palms going clammy. Having someone tall around would do wonders for her anxiety.

"Let's go," Hana urges, standing swiftly and brushing off her skirt, more on less on the same wavelength. "We shouldn't get involved with this idiot."

"He'll _hear you_ ," Tsuna hisses, already scrambling to his feet, sandcastle forgotten.

Tatsuzo Ryoma is a lot of things, but hard of hearing is not one of them.

" _What'd_ you just call me?" he snarls, whipping around and stalking towards them.

Tsunami swallows a hysterical giggle. She not— she's never been called out like this. She's used to passive-aggressive cold wars and smacktalk in the bathroom, not actual physical threats coming _too close too close_ . She lunges forward to snag Tsuna by the back of his shirt and drags him back out of the sandpit where the ground is firm and easy to run on. She'll talk a big game but Tatsuzo is way bigger up close than she thought he was and wow, no, fuck that shit right on outta here. Sometimes the best strategy is to _run the fuck away_ to live another day—

He walks right past them without so much as a glance. Tsunami's brain stalls out. Sputters. Restarts.

He is toe to toe with _Hana_ and for the first time, Tsunami sees her friend begin to look a little unsure, a little off-balance.

The sweet-looking dark-haired kid is already long gone, having seen his opportunity for what it was and she envies him something fierce because while _she_ could probably outrun this guy on her own, Tsuna was about as coordinated as a white girl in a horror movie. Dragging his ass would slow her down too much and that wasn't even accounting for Hana, who had probably never bothered to run anywhere in her _life_ and shit, shit, _balls_ , there's no good way out of this. Her heart rate begins to pick up speed and she can hear her breathing too loud inside her own head and her hands are sweaty and and and—

* * *

 

—no, no, no, Slipping is bad, not the time, _wake up_ —

* * *

 

And then she's wasted too much time floundering because Tatsuzo is planting both his meaty hands on Hana's shoulders and _shoving._ She goes down hard in a spray of sand and lays there for a moment, eyes wide.

Everything seems to pause. Tatsuzo looks surprised at himself, like he’d expected Hana to be harder to knock down. Hana, gaping and searching for something to say, doesn't look like she expected it either. For a moment, no one breathes.

Tsuna breaks the spell.

The shirt in Tsunami's grip wrenches once, twice, and disappears and she almost shrieks because her brother is suddenly _right there_ , what the fuck, knees shivering and with tears already bubbling up but planted right in between Hana and the danger.

"D-don't...y-you sho… shouldn't-!" Tsuna's voice is so, so small. With every word he tries and fails to choke out Tatsuzo's gobsmacked expression twists a little more in annoyance until he's outright sneering and then—

"Buzz off, brat."

And then Tsuna is in the dirt too.

Tsunami doesn't even feel _real_. Her head has drifted off somewhere outside of her body and she's having a hard time focusing on standing and breathing at the same time, but she is keenly aware of one thing.

There are two choices in front of her.

She can start talking _real_ fast and try to diffuse the situation before it escalates into something worse than what it is, or she can cut her losses, run, and find a teacher.

The second is ruled out immediately for obvious reasons. Hana and Tsuna are still on the ground and running means leaving them there. She’d literally rather swallow a big old fistful of sand.

...Also, she can't move her legs.

"H-hey," she begins, but her tongue lies thick and dry in her mouth and her voice is already shaking. Tatsuzo is embracing his new weapon, his new advantage over everyone around him and he is rounding on her, shit _fuck_ he's big, this isn't going to end well, what the hell was she even thinking—?

Tsuna is looking at her. There is sand in his hair and his eyes are wide, wide, wide and god, she never wants to see that look on his face ever again, hurt and confused and afraid.

This is Tsunami's fault somehow, it has to be. There's a thousand and one things she could have done different, done better. She should've gotten an adult the minute Tatsuzo showed up or she should've stood up for Hana or she should've, at the very fucking least, stopped her baby brother from getting hurt like she’d _promised_.

Instead, she'd let her fear stop her cold.

Tatsuzo's hands are coming up towards her and she makes a split-second decision.

Tsunami is scared. Tsunami is really, disproportionately _terrified_ of this child, but she is infinitely more afraid of looking her brother in the eye after she gets her ass kicked by a grade-schooler and so she focuses on that instead. Recalling self-defense tips from a life long abandoned, she ducks under his arms and steps into his space. She pulls her leg back and squeezes her eyes shut, praying to whoever is willing to listen that she will get out of this _alive and with my face intact, please lord, seven years old is way too young to die and I am too cute for stitches_.

Tsunami nails him in the balls with everything she has and he drops like a _rock_. She yelps and skitters backwards a half-step as he doubles over with a choked wail. She takes a deep breath— no, it's sticking in her throat, abort, fuck, she is shaking with too much adrenaline and her head is spinning around faster than she can keep up with. Lord, but she is bad under pressure.

Tsunami has never… never hurt someone on purpose like that before. There should be some kind of rush, yeah? A satisfied feeling in her gut for avenging something, for proving that she's the badder bitch on the playground? For winning?

...Tsunami just feels hollow and ill.

" _Bitch_ ," Tatsuzo wheezes. The slur sounds jarring in his squeaky child-voice, but Tsunami doesn't have time to care because as suddenly as he went down, he is trying to get back up again. There's a look in his eyes, dark and prideful and _humiliated_ and it occurs to Tsunami that this time he is going to go for her _._ As in, swinging fists and actual rage and it is probably going to hurt really, really bad.

She doubts that anyone has ever really stood up to him before, and now she's gone and punted him in the balls. Speaking of, she could've sworn that groin hits were supposed to incapacitate for longer than that, how fucking weak even are her little noodle legs and _holy shit_ he's faster than she thought he was—

Tsunami has never experienced this first-hand, but she went to public school. She knows how this cycle works. If she doesn't end this right now, it is going to happen again. She has taken the hornet's nest in both hands and thrown it against the fucking wall, and this kid is going to have it out for her until she's been hurt or humiliated enough to soothe his ego. Getting shoved on a playground is only going to be the beginning.

Tsunami sees Hana and Tsuna pulling themselves up from the dust and thinks of how much worse it could have been. How much worse it might be in the future. Tsunami thinks of a different Tsuna in a world where she isn't around, bullied for years and years over things he can't help. She thinks of _her_ Tsuna, small and easily startled and brave enough to stand up for his friends.

Under no circumstances can she be the reason that someone hurts him like that.

Tatsuzo's shoulders are level with her chest so Tsunami grabs the left in both hands (they're sweating so goddamn _much,_ don’t lose your grip, gotta hold tight) and drives her knee up once, twice, three times straight into his gut. He makes a horrible airless noise (what is she doing _what is she doing_ ) and his legs wobble and then buckle under him. She wrenches his shoulder to the side and he moves with the momentum in a rough tumble to the ground, curled up tight and wheezing deep, terrible breathes in and out and in and out.

Tsunami swallows. She forces her hands to still for just a moment. She has to be in control or this isn't going to work.

"You are not going to hurt me or my brother or my friends ever again," she begins, and if her voice is soft it is to mask the shaking. "You are not going to come after us, or that kid, or anyone, because if you do—"

Tsunami takes a slow breath in through her mouth. Just a little bit more, she's almost there. Tatsuzo is looking up at her with wide, wide eyes and she steels herself for one last push.

"If you do," she repeats, slow and measured. "I will hurt you _worse_."

It will be enough. It _has_ to be enough because she isn’t sure what else she can do.

Then the dark-haired kid comes back with a teacher and things start to blur together into a whirlwind of stress as she is shuffled from one lecturing adult to another and another. Tsunami knows when she's fucked up (oh boy has she _fucked up_ ), but she's done what needs to be done and regardless of the empty feeling in her stomach and the way she can't quite focus right she will not let herself regret it.

Sawada Tsunami is a girl of many talents, including but not limited to inopportune bouts of anxiety, self-delusion, and blatant denial. She is good at convincing herself of things. Avoiding difficult subjects is one of her greatest life skills.

Ears ringing, she keeps her eyes firmly on her feet through the scoldings and the lectures and the punishments. If she looks up, she can’t guarantee she won’t start crying. She hasn't cried once since her second life began she's isn't going to start _now_ of all times, not over some random kid who definitely-maybe had it coming anyways. She's not.

Hana has been shuffled off to another teacher to give her side of the story. Tsuna keeps touching her arm but it's different, more hesitant than it used to be. Even when Nana is called in to pick her up, furious and disapproving, Tsunami doesn't do much more than shrug and nod when prompted.

It's… this is too much. This is too much for her handle and if she looks anyone in the eye, if she sees the disappointment-anger-fear reflected back at her then everything is going to become way too real.

She feels like shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slam dunk the nearest child directly into the sun. its fine. its good.


	5. To Scale the Map

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > We still have our roads to run about  
> To scale the map, scale the map, to get us back on track  
> I've seen you in a fight you lost  
> I've seen you in a fight
> 
>   
> (local anxious idiot has her name cleared, becomes a wizard) 

Tsuna's sister is ridiculous.

This is nothing new. Tsuna cottoned on at a young age that for all that she likes to act like one of the Big Kids, Nami is kind of a huge, dramatic dork. He catches her gazing off into the middle distance like some kind of of anime protagonist a  _whole lot_ , and even though home is warm and safe and normal, she sometimes clams up and looks around like she's waiting for a monster to crawl out from under the bed and take her away.

Tsuna is seven and thus too old to believe in the boogey man anymore, but he remembers what it was like. The shadows in the room he shares with his sister had always seemed so much longer and deeper at night. Tsuna would curl into Nami's back (or stomach, or side, or leg— he is an unapologetic bed hog and she is  _warm_ ) and try to pretend like all the darkness in the room was as soft and safe as the one he found when he buried his face into her shirt.

Inevitably, something downstairs would creak or there'd be a weird noise and Tsuna wouldn't be able to ignore the creeping fear anymore. The worst of it all would be when Nami got too hot or too crowded and would wriggle out from under his deadweight. She could never roll away very far, constrained by the size of the bed, but the inches between them felt like a chasm when every shift of the house meant some unknown creature coming to gobble him up.

Every night, he shivered and cried and bulldozed over his sister's attempts to find her own space until, finally, she'd snapped. The only tip-off he'd had was the way she suddenly went still against his grasping hand, and then she'd shot straight up and ripped the covers off of them both.

"What're you  _doing?!_ " Tsuna had screeched quietly, trying not to wake their mother. Even  _babies_  knew that the only thing between the Boogey Man and a tasty child-snack were the blankets. He couldn't get you as long as you were under them, that was just common sense _._

Nami had hopped out of bed and planted her feet firmly in the carpet, hands anchored to her hips. She'd squeezed her eyes shut tight and blinked a few times to clear the sleep, slipping into Big Kid Mode before he could demand she get back up where it was safe.

"Tsuna," she'd huffed. "Who d'you think would win in a fight, me or some stupid monster?"

"Monster," he had answered without hesitation. Nami was and is braver than him and could deadlift an entire dog without breaking a sweat, but monsters had teeth and claws twice her size and they used them to  _eat_  people.

"...Okay." Nami sighed. Tsuna had been immediately wary of her next move, since Nami never _ever_ let him get away with suggesting she was anything less than, as she put it, 'The Alpha Twin'.

Nami turned and walked to the end of the room, coming to a stop in front of the closed closet door. She'd taken a long, tense moment to size it up. Tsuna remembered the feeling of his stomach clenching with anxiety, completely convinced that something was about to break the door down and go on the attack. His sister had remained unaffected and turned her back on the closet in favor of staring him down.

"I don't agree, though," she said simply. This was surprising to no one. " _I_  think that if I saw a monster, I would punch it right in the face." She'd jabbed at the empty air to demonstrate.

"Nuh-uh, no way!" Tsuna had disagreed immediately, leaning forward in the bed. "It'd eat you and then it'd come an' eat me an' then it'd go find  _Mama—_ "

"Nope," she interrupted. "I'd punch it and it'd explode." Her tone left no room for disagreement even though Tsuna had been nowhere near done doing just that, fully convinced his sister was crazy and going to get herself digested. He almost jumped out of his skin when she whirled back around and kicked the closet door. "Hear that? If you bother us, I'll make you explode."

" _Nami-nee_ ," he'd whined, shuffling back as far as the bed would allow. His sister may be intent on provoking all the big scary things that lived in there, but Tsuna didn't want any part of it.

Then she'd reached out and flung the door wide open with no warning and Tsuna had felt a little piece of his soul give up and flee for safer country.

"See," she'd grinned triumphantly. "Nothing there. I'm so scary it ran away!"

They both waited a few long seconds to be totally sure nothing was going to jump out of the darkness. When Nami had been able to dance a jig around the room uneaten, his mind had been  _blown_.

She'd been insufferably smug for  _ages_ , even after he figured out that monsters were fake anyways and she'd probably just been messing with him.

Considering all of that, he'd sort of expected her to take beating up a real life bully a little better than she was? Tsuna knows that his sister liked to talk herself up to be a lot stronger than her noodle arms allowed, he isn't blind. There was a spider in the downstairs bathroom once and she'd refused to go anywhere near the room for days, even after it had been removed. She also has this _thing_ about cats and hoards hair accessories and sometimes, when he says really nice things to her face, she gets all red and actually stands up to physically run away from him.

(Tsuna always chases after her because it's his job as her little brother to tease her until she explodes. Also, being the Alpha Twin for a change is super duper fun and he isn't about to pass up a chance to be the stronger sibling for once.)

Anyways, the point is that he is well aware that his sister is a big weenie under all her bluster.

This, however, is  _ridiculous_.

After the incident, Nami is suspended from school for three days. He wants to stay home with her, but Mama won't let him and if he's gone, then Hana might get lonely and find new friends and then it'd just be he and Nami all alone again. Tsuna loves his sister, but he also really likes having another friend to play with.

The first night is quiet. Mama had scolded the both of them for a while after dinner and in the end they'd both been sent upstairs without dessert. Tsuna's a little put out about this because it's not like  _he's_  the one who got in a fight, but Mama is already angry and he's got more sense than to make an issue out of it.

At first, Tsuna doesn't know how to handle his sister. He's seen Nami when she's scared, he's seen her when she's mad, and he's even seen her when she's… empty, for lack of better word.

(He hate hate  _hates_  it when she goes empty. Her face goes slack and she stops seeing him even when he's right in front of her. He has to grab her hand sometimes just so he can be sure she won't suddenly start floating away.)

Tsuna has never seen Tsunami get  _sad_.

She curls up in the corner of their bed, knees up to her chest. She's staring off into the middle distance again, like how she does when Tsuna knows she's thinking about something really hard. She only looks at him once, when he carefully moves to sit at the edge of the bed, before averting her eyes almost immediately.

"...Um," Tsuna says. He doesn't know what he wants to say but the silence is too heavy for him to stand. "Do you… Do you wanna talk about it?"

"Um," she echoes, voice small and scratchy. "...Later?"

He hates this. It's never been awkward between them, not even when she'd accidentally hip-checked him so hard he'd fallen to the sidewalk and scraped up both his hands and knees so bad there was blood. Or when he'd tripped into her in the living room and she'd banged the side of her head into the couch and spent half an hour with an icepack pressed to her skull.

He opens his mouth to say  _okay,_  to say  _no, not later, tell me what's wrong_ , but before he can get a word out he sees her body go lax and her eyes go flat and he knows his sister won't hear him anyways.

(He  _hates_  it when she does this.)

* * *

The first day back at school without Tsunami is weird.

He can't remember a single time in his life that he's been so far away from his sister. His earliest memories all involve her in one way or another, whether it's of her trailing behind him on some house-wide game of make believe or of her back while she stood between him and some unknown danger, like an animal or the vacuum cleaner.

"Doesn't that get annoying?" Hana asks when he confides in her, nose scrunching slightly at the very thought. "I can't imagine being around someone all the time like that."

Frankly, Tsuna can't imagine  _not_  having someone around all the time. Or, well, he couldn't. He is doing a great deal more than just imagining at the moment and he is already sick to death of it.

"No. Don't you ever get lonely when you're by yourself?" He asks, head propped on his folded arms and legs swinging under the table. Hana takes a moment to honestly consider the question, unconsciously mirroring Tsuna's pendulum legs at a more sedate pace.

"Sometimes, I guess. I usually just read a book or something, I don't know. Being alone doesn't bug me that much."

Tsuna whines and buries his face in his arms. The books Hana reads are dry and boring. From time to time, she'll break out a fantasy novel that looks kind of interesting and even read a paragraph out loud, but some of the words she comes across are so long or weird-sounding that Tsuna suspects she's making them up just to mess with him. Her comics are okay, but she takes them really seriously and gets twitchy when other people try to read them. At any rate, all her suggestions for keeping himself distracted while his sister is suspended aren't proving all that useful to him.

He and Hana elect to stay inside for recess that day. Neither one of them really feels the loss. Hana would much rather stay away from all the screaming and roughhousing and Tsuna was only ever really interested in the sandpit, which is now Ruined Forever, capital letters for maximum importance. The only reason either one of them really bothered to go outside for recess in the first place was because Nami liked to wander around and burn off energy so she could nap more comfortably during class.

There are a few other people lingering in the classroom, but the duo pointedly does not pay them any mind. Gossip travels fast when no one has developed a sense of shame. Tsuna's heard more takes on the actual story than he ever thought possible, ranging in believability from 'Kurokawa Hana is part of the yakuza and Sawada Tsunami is her bodyguard' (ridiculous, if not understandable) to 'Sawada Tsunami is an alien and she killed Ryoma-san with her laser eyes for talking to her brother' (blatantly incorrect).

"Ignore them," Hana had grumbled after the third or fourth or ninth time Tsuna had pulled a face at one overheard conversation or another. "They're all idiot monkeys and they'll forget about it soon anyways."

(Hana thinks she's being sneaky, but Tsuna knows she's actually incredibly pleased that people seem to think she could merit a bodyguard.)

" _Bluh_ ," he whines, sinking low into his seat. Two more days. He can hold out two more days.

Class can't let out fast enough.

* * *

 

After school ends, Tsuna finds his sister shut in their room with all the lights off, face down in the carpet and limbs akimbo.

"Um," he says softly because he'd had a whole speech prepared when he'd walked in the door but he hasn't made contingencies for Nami just straight up not being awake. It wouldn't be the first time that she'd fallen asleep pancaked to the carpet. He nudges her with a toe to check.

" _Nng_ ," she whines, batting a hand vaguely in his direction. Conscious, then, if only just. Tsuna scoots a wide perimeter around her, pausing once to toss his school bag in the general direction of his bed before gingerly squatting down a few feet away from her, his back to the closet.

There's a little bit of afternoon sun coming in through a slit in the curtains and it cuts across the floor, illuminating a diagonal stripe of light through Nami's hair and across her back. Tsuna thinks she looks kind of like a cat, drowsy and sunbathing and laid out in strange and inconvenient places. Cats make her weird though, so it's a comparison he's probably going to keep to himself.

They sit quietly in the dark for a while. Tsuna is itching to pull his sister up, to share about his day and make her help with his homework or just to make her  _say something_ , but he isn't sure where to start. He shifts a little, antsy and uncomfortable.

He almost jumps when Nami releases an explosive sigh and painstakingly rolls herself onto her back like it's the most physically taxing thing she's ever done in her life. Feeling well enough to be a drama queen, then.

"I'm sorry," she quietly, turning to look at him. The light paints a glowing line across her bangs and illuminates the rest of her face, which is set into something sad and sleepy and maybe even a little scared.

Tsuna blinks.

"What for?"

Nami makes a face and gestures vaguely into the open air, looking for her words.

"You… got hurt. And I couldn't stop it. And, um, I'm also really sorry you had to see… y'know.  _That_."

'That' referring to the way she'd bulldozed Tatsuzo Ryoma, he assumes. There's some kind of misunderstanding happening here, he can feel it like an itch at the back of his neck.

"I'm not… mad." No, wrong word, try again. "I'm not scared, either," he corrects.

Nami's eyes widen a fraction and Tsuna knows he's hit the nail on the head.

"I mean," he adds quickly, "That was really, um, Tatsuzo-san is really big and I was definitely  _scared_ , just, you know. Not of you," he finishes lamely. "I know you're not gonna hurt me or anything, that's dumb. You don't have to apologize to me."

"...Right." Nami agrees. She pulls herself up into a crouch that mirrors his own, heavy-limbed exhaustion giving way to an energy that buzzes in her bones. "I'd never. Hurt you, I mean. Never, ever, not like that, not even if you asked me to."

Tsuna doesn't know why he'd  _ever_  ask his sister to seriously beat him up, he values his life and safety, but she looks so earnest that he just rolls with it.

"Are you… well, yesterday, when we got home…" he begins, but Nami cuts him off.

"I'm okay now. There's, uh, not really a lot to do when you're grounded other than think a lot and get over yourself, so…" Nami giggles, nervous and self-deprecating.

"Tell me about it anyways," he asks. Demands, really, because this has probably been one of the slowest days of his life and all he didn't realize how much he'd miss being around his sister while she talks with her hands and bumps him affectionately until he had to sit through a whole day without it. There's also the hope that maybe, just maybe, if he can get her to actually talk about what she's feeling for once, then he can figure out what makes her go  _empty_  and make it go far, far away.

She's twisting her fingers around in knots, uncomfortable, but he can see her start to give in. Tsuna shuffles forwards until the gap between them is closed and gently bats Nami's hands apart, tangling them in his own instead.

"Tell  _meeeee_." He draws his words out into a fourteen syllable phrase like she does when she's at her most annoying. She chokes down a snicker and knocks her knees against his with enough force to tip him over out of his crouch. She primly crosses her legs and settles down beside him, smiling faintly.

She tells him.

* * *

Sawada Tsunami is fucking bored.

She is also fucking upset. Fucking disappointed in herself for hurting a kid who was still learning better, fucking mad at herself for  _being_  disappointed in herself because she'd been helping her baby brother and her best friend, and fucking annoyed above all that she can't seem to get her emotions straight.

Predominantly, though, she is fucking bored. Three days is actually an incredibly long time to spend thinking about something with no distractions, especially for someone who would rather die than spend more than fifteen minutes alone with her own thoughts.

As someone who has actually died, Tsunami thinks she's entitled to the feeling.

The first day is the hardest. After seven years, Tsunami has forgotten what it feels like to be well and truly alone. Nana's idea of a solid grounding is to put a blanket ban on books and television, so Tsunami spends the afternoon facedown on the carpet in the middle of the floor because she is a goddamn mess and acting the part makes her feel a little better. 

Tsunami buries her nose into the shag and breathes deep. Then she rolls over and wheezes a little bit because shit, that carpet smells like feet and ass and she's just gone and rubbed her face all over it, what the hell is her problem—

And, hello, isn't that just the crux of all her issues lately. She knows exactly what her problem is, and it's herself.

She'd overreacted. Badly. A shove or two from a kid on a playground should not have warranted one, two, three knees to the solar plexus and what could possibly be construed as a death threat. Tsunami feels slimy and guilty and  _completely unrepentant_  and, of everything, that's her biggest hang-up.

Given half an opportunity, she would do it all over again. Maybe a little differently, a little less hesitantly, but if the situation called for her to suplex a seven-year-old into a block of concrete she thinks she would've done it.

Elizabeth Milo was a 5'10" blonde white girl with a cat and a love for tiny shorts. She was allergic to almonds, afraid of spiders, and the most violent action she'd ever taken was an overly enthusiastic booty bump that ended with four different people head-over-ass in her front yard. Lizzie Milo died because she would rather break her own neck than mildly inconvenience an animal.

Sawada Tsunami has yet to clear four feet tall. Her hair is pin-straight and honey brown and her eyes can glow like a jack-o-lantern. She doesn't have any pets because her baby brother is afraid of most things with more than two legs, and she hasn't worn anything shorter than a sundress since she graduated diapers. She loves nuts, has a little brother she adores so much it scares her, and... is still fucking terrified of spiders, actually.

The point is, Sawada Tsunami does not want to hurt anybody. Sawada Tsunami wants to protect the people she loves.

Sawada Tsunami flips right back over on her face and takes a big open-mouthed inhale against the carpet because whether she likes it or not, her life is shonen anime now and if binge-watching  _Naruto_  at 3 AM has taught her anything, it is that protection and violence go hand in hand. She doesn't like it, she actively fucking hates it, but if she wants to be worth anything to anyone in this life she's going to have to put on her Big Girl panties and adapt. The sour taste of sweaty feet and butts curling in her mouth feels like a kind of penance, so Tsunami breathes in long and deep and makes a mental note to vacuum more often.

This is how Tsuna finds her however many hours later, sprawled on the floor with her nose shoved in the fibers like she's dead or possibly crazy. She's dozing off just a tad, emotional exhaustion only exacerbating her constant desire to nap.

Her brother, forever charming, solves this for her by toeing her in the side like she's roadkill.

When he carefully stays out of arm's reach and chooses instead to crouch a healthy distance away from her, her throat closes just a little.

Suddenly, Tsunami recalls why it was so impossible to look anyone in the eye yesterday. She is making her peace with her actions and her morals, justifying them by reminding herself of the world she lives in, but Tsuna and Nana and Hana have no concept of the future she's seen. As far as they know, she genuinely just lost it and went apeshit on some random playground pest.

No one moves for a long time. Tsunami doesn't know what to say, how to make things better, so she just lays perfectly still in the ass-carpet and hopes for divine intervention. When a few minutes pass without any sign of a higher power, Tsunami sighs in resignation and flips herself over. Time to face the music.

In the end, the music is maybe less discordant and awful than she'd anticipated. Although, to be fair, she'd been psyching herself up for some kind of dramatic meltdown in which her brother declared that he hated her and was choosing to disown her.

(Tsunami's life is shonen anime. Ruling out the ridiculous would've been foolish.)

Tsuna somehow manages to wrestle an entire summary of her twenty-four hour emotional rollercoaster from her. He was there for most of it, she reminds him, but he shrugs and grins so bright and wide that she actually has to take a moment to let her heart unmelt. Tsuna seems perfectly content just playing with her hands and listening to her describe first her fear, then her regret-but-not, and then her resolution to do better.

"Uh," he interjects when she gets to that part. "About that. Can you maybe not get suspended again? School sucks when you're gone and Mama got really mad..."

Tsunami pauses. He raises a good point— repeated public performances of yesterday's incident is going to create way more problems than it'll solve. In the short term, Nana will roast her ass like a turkey. In the long term, she is going to end up dead in a ditch on the side of the road because if magic fire and time travel are real, chances are that Hibari Kyoya is, too. She's fairly certain that unauthorized fighting counts as rule-breaking and she has no intention of poking that beast… well, ever.

Tsunami pouts, because this means she's either going to have to let the issue go the next time someone harrasses her people, or, more likely, she's going to have to figure out a way to get sneaky about it.

* * *

The second day of Tsunami's suspension begins when she wakes up with her little brothers elbow jammed so firmly into her cheek that when she tries to move away the entire left side of her face lights up with pins and needles as blood resumes its normal circulation. He's stolen most of the blankets and her right foot is ice cold from exposure.

"You have your own bed, doofus," she mutters, digging her own elbow mercilessly into his ribs. Tsuna emits a noise closer to bovine than human and sluggishly slaps back, burying his face in the pillow like it will save him from being awake. Tsunami rather likes that idea and is sorely tempted to try it out herself, but she can see sunlight coming in through the curtains. One of them still has school, and it's not her.

"Don' wanna," Tsuna slurs as she begins shaking him, burrowing deeper into his pillow. Tsunami lets up and just squints at him for a while, sleep-addled brain trying to process her next move. After long moments, she nods to herself and pulls her legs all the way up to her chest.

The scream Tsuna releases when her frozen toes slip under his shirt and dig into his stomach makes getting shoved off the bed absolutely worth it.

Tsunami goes about her morning routine while Tsuna sluggishly drags himself to the closet. She is still  _incredibly_  grounded, but she'd spent all of yesterday moping about on the floor and she feels kind of gross for it. Tsunami is nothing if not a creature of habit and putting herself back onto a routine will probably help the ennui. Also, her hair is a tangled mess and that cannot be allowed to stand.

Tsunami has been blessed with a cute, round face free of blemishes and thick brown hair that doesn't frizz. She'll be vain about them if she damn well pleases.

By the time she finally makes it out of the shower (just this side of lukewarm because as much as she loves scalding hot showers, she loves her hair even more) Tsuna has already eaten and dressed. Hair still wrapped in a towel, she pokes her head out of the bathroom and cups her hands around her mouth.

"Have a nice day at school!" she hollers down the staircase, radiating smugness. Getting suspended fucking blows, but at least she gets another two days away from the noisy hellscape that is the Namimori Public School system.

"Have a nice day cleaning the house!" Tsuna fires back, voice muffled with distance. Tsunami's face drops into a scowl and she resists the urge to flip him off. She's already on thin ice with Nana and that's the sort of shit mother's can _sense._

He's right, though. As part of her punishment for being a violent little hellion, Nana had tasked her with cleaning the entire second floor by herself, bathroom and all.

Jokes on him, though. Tsunami actually enjoys cleaning up— or, she enjoys finding all the shit she'd thought she'd lost years ago tucked away behind a shelf or under the bed. Odds were, she'd get sidetracked part-way through looking at Tsuna's old vocabulary quizzes.

The door clicks shut behind Nana and Tsuna and Tsunami stands up a little straighter. She's going to brush her hair, put on real-people clothes, and get something done today.

Moping time is over.

* * *

It is day two of Nami's suspension and Tsuna's passive-aggressive scowl at every wildly inaccurate rumor he overhears is giving her a migraine, so Hana decides it's time to try her hand at some damage control.

"I am not part of the yakuza," she interjects blandly, stepping in between two startled girls. Tsuna had looked a little perplexed at her insistence that they spend recess outside today but, as she'd expected, hadn't offered much resistance.

("Just sit by this tree and look really pathetic," Hana had instructed, guiding him firmly by the arm. She had nothing but confidence in his ability to pull off looking like someone had just stolen his lunch money, and by the way Tsuna's shoulders slumped, neither did he.)

"Nami isn't an alien, either," and Hana isn't actually one-hundred percent on that one, but saying so out loud would not help her case. "She was just trying to help me."

The girl on the left is still gaping and a little pale for being caught gossiping but her friend on the right leans in a little closer, clearly interested.

"I heard she almost broke Ryoma-kun's  _ribs_ ," she whispers almost gleefully and, wow, that's news to Hana. She'd seen Tatsuzo hit the floor and stay down, sure, but Nami and Tsuna both had little toothpick legs that looked like they'd snap under a stiff breeze. Then again, this same girl had been contemplating Hana's own involvement in a crime ring just seconds before so she would take her words with a grain of salt.

"He pushed me really hard." Hana looks down and away, hunching her shoulders the barest amount to make herself seem smaller, more meek. "And he was picking on us. He called Nami a," and here Hana leans in, only mostly pretending to scan their immediate surroundings for adults. "A  _bitch_."

Both girls let out scandalized gasps. Hana feels a little thrill run through her as well. She reads a lot and she's definitely come across harsher language, but it's the first time that she's said any of it out loud herself.

"Thats a bad word!" The quieter girl says, alarmed and a little in awe. Hana nods sagely and motions over to Tsuna, who is doing a wonderful job of looking harmless and sweet.

"Tsuna tried to help me too but he's really small. Tatsuzo-san shoved him and when Nami tried to make him stop, he almost hit her. She was just t-trying to help,"

Hana winces internally at her poor attempt at acting cowed. She's trying to channel Tsuna but his nervous tics don't feel quite right on her body, more used to confidence and control. The two girls don't seem to notice or care, lapping up her story with wide eyes.

"Ryoma-kun  _is_  kind of mean," the girl on the left hedges, and Hana knows she's succeeded. "He put a worm in my backpack once!"

"Yeah, and  _I_  heard he's the one who put gum in Shiori-chan's chair last month! Remember how mad she got when it left that weird stain on her butt?"

Hana shuffles backwards slowly until she's sure the two girls aren't paying her any mind and then she makes her escape, returning to the tree she's left Tsuna to pout under like a wayward puppy and tugging him to his feet.

"...What's wrong with your face?" Tsuna asks with genuine concern. Hana drops her attempt at demure puppy eyes and scowls.

"Shut up, what's wrong with  _your_ face."

Hana chances a glance back at the two girls, who are now standing so close together that their shoulders are touching as they debate fiercely. Hana fudged the truth there just a little, she admits. She's conveniently left out the part where she herself called Tatsuzo an idiot and the bit where Nami had slammed him in the junk, but all the important stuff is there. If her understanding of the rumor mill is any good at all, come the end of the day half the grade will know that Nami's suspension is because she's fought off a bully and not because she spontaneously mauled someone for the heck of it.

"Alright, next." Hana flips her hair imperiously, nearly catching Tsuna straight in the face. "Who else has been talking trash?"

He waffles for a moment, caught off guard. Hana gives him time to process and is rewarded when his posture straightens out, something like mischief settling behind his eyes.

"That guy who sits across from me, y'know, with the lunchbox? He said you paid Nami ten bucks to punch Ryoma because he wouldn't be your boyfriend."

Hana's grin is mostly teeth. She knew there was a spine in there somewhere.

* * *

She doesn't mean to, at first.

Tsunami has been half of a whole for seven years now and even if she fancies herself above childish attachment (self-delusion), she's not too proud to admit that she misses her twin when he isn't around.

She is cleaning her room when it first hits. Most of what she is picking up is detritus from Tsuna's habit of putting things like games or worksheets down and then forgetting about them, but there's a fair amount of loose knickknacks of her own. Tsunami has found what has to amount to at least three packs of hair ties and a couple of bow clips she's forgotten she owns.

She shoves them in her hair for safekeeping, making a neat little rainbow of patterns and pastels down the side of her head. It's partly to keep her long hair out of her face while she works and partly so she doesn't have to keep walking to the bathroom drawer every time she finds a new one. If she looks a little ridiculous, well. There's no one around to judge.

Tsunami twists a little of her hair out of the way to make room for her third tiny rose clip, scowling a little when her pin straight hair just slips through teeth without catching. Lizzie, with her temperamental frizz and waves, had always wanted to take a metaphorical weedwhacker to those people who complained that their hair was too straight and silky for styling, but Tsunami was beginning to understand the struggle. She looks down at her accessory, contemplating.

The pin itself is a little out of alignment, which is doubtless part of the problem. Tsuna had probably stepped on it, which was a fate shared by most if not all of her wayward hair clips. Its part of the reason he complains about them so much, she supposes.

" _You look weird,"_  she can imagine him whining.  _"Just put them away before they end up on the floor again."_

Tsunami breathes out slowly through her nose, squeezes her eyes shut, and lets herself Slip to try and regain her equilibrium.

* * *

The cool darkness of her Slipspace is a welcome comfort as she sinks to floor. Well, she assumes its the floor. The inky darkness is so pervasive that, save for the dim glimmers of the star balls she knows are scattered around her, the ceiling and the ground are completely indistinguishable from each other.

Tsunami tilts her chin to what she guesses is the sky and moves to lean backwards so she can flop onto her back like the incredibly lazy starfish she is, but she only makes it halfway down before her skull collides with something cold and smooth.

Tsuna's star ball, she realizes. Of  _course_  it's Tsuna's star ball. It is literally always Tsuna's star ball and she can't move five fucking inches without nearly braining herself on it every damn time. She knocks her head against it again in annoyance before shuffling around so her back can press against it.

The cool of the glass seeps through her shirt and she whines through her nose.

She misses her brother. It has to be around lunchtime by now, right? He and Hana probably stayed inside for recess, considering what had happened the last time they were on the playground. Imagining the big brown puppy eyes he's probably making at the sandpit, now ruined by a shitty experience, is enough to make her gut twist just a little. He's a sweet kid and he deserves to be able to play outside without assholes ruining things for him every time.

Twirling her hair around her index finger idly, she wonders if Tsuna is

* * *

_blue sky peeking through the branches cotton candy clouds brisk fall breeze grass is dying what is she doing roots digging deep deep deep_

* * *

under the tree, next to the slides, in the playground, Namimori Elementary, Namimori, Japan.

…

What.

What the _fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> like not to be a shithead or anything but every third character in khr is some kinda esper. cant all be flamey an shit, let me have my fun,


	6. Morning Sickness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> > Morning sickness, XYZ  
> Teenage girls with ESP
> 
>   
> (local anxious idiot becomes Google Maps, has friendship forced upon her) 

You are never as prepared to spontaneously develop superpowers as you think you are.

Tsunami has long since come to terms with the fact that her life is a gag manga that someone is taking far too seriously, but as she stares down at the grooves her fingernails have dug into her palm, she has the distinct feeling that she’s the butt of the joke this time.

Six times. She’s gone into her Slipspace, squeezed her eyes shut, and played human Find-My-Phone _six times_ with the exact same results. Tsuna was her target of choice, but she’d tried Hana and Nana a handful of times each, always with the same results— A flash of scenery almost too quick to parse and then a bone-deep knowledge of a point on the map.

It’s no longer something she can write off as some kind of weird fluke or a particularly vivid hallucination.

...Well, probably not, anyway. She’s never _actually_ fully convinced that her life isn’t just a coma dream, but that’s a rabbit hole she’s been down so many times that she barely sees the point of dwelling on it anymore.

The point is, Sawada Tsunami has been the brand new owner of magic powers for about four hours and, in typical Tsunami fashion, has spent the last three of them with her head in her hands trying very hard not to freak out.

One the one hand, sweet, magic powers. She’d expected them to come with a little more _fire_ , but this was cool too? Less conspicuous than combusting in the middle of the backyard, at least. It had practical uses too, assuming she was able to find anyone and not just people she’d hung out with every day for months.

On the other hand, bursting into flames might have made her feel better. That, at least, is a strain of anime bullshit she is well-versed in.

Tsunami takes a deep breath and holds it until the ache in her lungs makes her feel a little more like a human and a little less like a balloon full of bees.

Which flame has the GPS attribute? God, she hopes she doesn’t have some kind of super secret eighth flame. Ninth flame? Eighteenth, if you count all the Earth Flames and the Oath Flame and the Flame of Wrath, and wasn’t there some game-exclusive secret Snow Flame or something—

Tsunami smothers herself in her hands and whines. Yeah, okay, fuck it, she might have some stupid contrived Ten Thousandth Secret Flame of Midnight Hurricanes or whatever, she’s running out of energy to care. Her eyes glow in the dark and her brother is borderline psychic, this shouldn’t even bother her anymore.

Tsunami belatedly takes a moment to make sure the door is closed and settles back into the pile of blankets and pillows she’s haphazardly tossed on her bed. She doesn’t have motor control when she Slips and she’s gotten pretty damn tired of coming out of her trances with a crick in her neck.

She screws her eyes shut...

* * *

...and opens them again to a world of endless black and pinpoint lights.

She pops to her feet and hops from foot to foot, trying to clear her head and get her hypothetical mental-construct blood flowing again.

She’s established her psychic bullshit is a real, actual thing. Next up, experiments.

How far does her range extend? Tsunami’s social circle is limited to exactly three people who all live within five miles of each other. It’s a start, but it’s not a big enough data pool. She paps both of her cheeks sharply and resists the urge to grumble out loud.

There’s a set pattern she’s discovered she has to adhere to to make her witchery work: A name, a face, and an impression. Without people she knows, people she has some kind of feel for, her options for experimenting are extremely limited.

Her progress with her secret magic powers is being stonewalled because she’s an unrepentant introvert. The irony is palpable.

Tsunami closes her eyes and contemplates once again how incredibly miserable she is going to be tomorrow when she has to wake up and face a bunch of gossipy children on less than a full ten hours of sleep. She knows her anxiety well enough at this point to know she’s going to be up all night overthinking every single moment in her life that could possibly be construed as foreshadowing for her magic powers, up to and including: her ability to always find the missing sock, the entirety of the thing with Timoteo, her unbroken string of wins at hide-and-seek, and her incredible ability to find all dogs in a two block radius and pet them. If she’s lucky, it’ll eclipse the back-to-school, everyone-is-going-to-hate-me jitters she has scheduled to torment her well into 2 AM.

Compounded on that is the very real fear of getting her ass kicked by a nine year old Hibari Kyoya in penance for her wanton rule-breaking, despite the fact that she’s neither met nor even really heard rumor of him yet. It could just be the paranoia talking, true, but Tsunami prefers to think of it as pragmatism and a sense for self-preservation.

Just because he hasn’t struck yet doesn’t mean he never will. It’s best not to tempt fate.

...

Hang on.

...She has an idea.

Tsunami takes a moment to position herself in the dim space, spinning around until she finds an orientation that feels right. It was a lot easier back when she had Tsuna’s star to let her know which way was up, but it still hasn’t flickered back into view since the Ninth came to town and she gets the feeling it probably won’t until Reborn shows up. Not that she’ll ever tell him, but she’s privately holding Timoteo responsible for the ten thousand times she’s cracked her face on her brother’s star ball because she didn’t know it was there. One day, she’d pay him back in kind.

Or not, because that’s a dumbass reason to get shot in the head, but it makes her feel better to imagine.

Pulling herself out of her revenge fantasies, Tsunami takes a deep breath. She lets herself focus on her brother for a moment, just to stretch. Sawada Tsunayoshi is big bambi eyes and fluffy hair and a penchant for soft things like mittens and hoodies and blankets—

* * *

 c _old linoleum fluorescent lights woman talking bored group project desks in a huddle tap tap_

* * *

 —Row 3, Class 2-2, Namimori Elementary, Namimori, Japan.

Tsunami shakes herself sharply and the vision rolls away like oil on water. Suddenly being punted out of her own head is a feeling that’s going to take some getting used to, but after seven odd tries she thinks she’s maybe getting the hang of it.

Dropping like a rock onto whatever serves as a floor in the void, Tsunami straightens her back and tries to center herself.

Breathe in for four beats, hold it, and exhale for eight.

Right, her idea. Hibari Kyoya. Right now he’d be, what, nine? She tries to imagine what a nine year old Hibari might look like and the resulting image is more than a little anime and closer to Fon than anything else, but she figures its close enough.

Using what she’s learned about the anime-to-realism conversion, she tries to reconstruct what he probably looks like in 3D. Gray eyes, but different than Hana’s. The steel is closer to the surface, the set a little less soft. Chubby cheeks, probably, which is only super cute until she remembers that he could probably break her spine like a toothpick anyways.

He’s… probably in Namimori. It’s a start, at least. That’s a name and a sort-of face checked off the list. Next, an impression.

The Hibari she remembers is straightforward, trigger-happy, and more than a little self-centered. He has a worldview he abides by rigidly, even though the rules seem kind of arbitrary to her. He has a thing about animals? Not that she has any room to judge because she does too, but also she’s never trained a dog to bark her school’s fight song, so, nyeh. Hibari is the epitome of a control freak and coupled with his tenacity and natural physical ability he’s

* * *

  _paper walls mats on the floor one two three four pairs of eyes hit it harder why wont it break make it break make it break make it break_

* * *

 in the middle of a dojo, two miles west, Namimori, Japan. The vision is over almost before it begins and Tsunami is left chilly with the echo of the emotion behind it. He isn’t... _angry_ , she doesn’t think, just focused to a degree she’s never been in her life and the shock of the switch is making her head spin just a little. The leftover emotional flavor is the strongest she’s felt so far, but… well. It’s Hibari. She’s not surprised.

It’s a little irritating, but it makes sense that she can’t get a pinpoint accurate location. She’s never actually met Hibari Kyoya in real life and the best approximation she has of his face is a mental screencap from an anime she watched nearly a decade ago.

Which, fine, cool. Tsunami is perfectly fine not knowing what he looks like in real life. Her primary goal is to live past twenty and close encounters of the Hibari kind run directly contrary to that. She spares a moment to wonder why the hell he’s at a dojo during school hours, but some things are clearly meant to remain unknown.

It’s a good exercise for finding people and she’s pleased with her results, but Hibari apparently lives even closer than Hana does (terrifying) so it’s not any kind of test of her range.

Tsunami wracks her brain, drumming her fingers on the floor absently. Who does she know of that lives farther out? Gokudera, maybe?

She breathes in deeply, and holds it, trying her best to clear her head.

_In for four, hold for seven, out for eight._

Hayato Gokudera as a child comes a little easier to her than Hibari. The boy in her head is maybe a little younger than the one in reality, dressed to the nines in a tiny suit jacket and those snazzy page boy shorts. Silver hair, a little on the scrawny side, and bottle green eyes maybe a little too big for his face. He isn’t smiling because even in her head it’s kind of hard to picture, but the cantankerous scowl somehow manages to make him look cute rather than unapproachable.

He’s… she doesn’t really know. At this point in his life he’s probably pretty jaded. His piano teacher was his mom and no one thought to tell him until after she was already dead, his sister is passive-aggressively trying to kill him, and no one will take him seriously because he’s just a weedy little piano nerd. Tsunami’s probably just projecting at this point, but she imagines he’s feeling boxed in, lied to, a little invisible—

* * *

  _-̷͎͘ ̷̠͛.̸̳̣̉.̴͎̟̾ ̸̪̍̕-̷͈̥̈́.̸̛̠ ̸̬̽̽-̶̖̼̄.̴̧̭̿̏-̶̧̣̇̃-̸͓̲̈́ ̷̤͆ͅ.̷͍̇͠.̴̜͘͠-̸̣̤̎ ̷͎̳͐̚.̵̧͙̍-̶̻̐.̵̖͑ ̶̦.̵̫͙̆͊-̷͖̍.̵̹̓.̶̫̦͌ ̵͓͂̚·̸̧̳̋͝-̵̪̊̕·̸̲̐̇-̷̘͚̿·̶̻͔̔-̶̡̧̈́͆ ̸̺͇̂-̸̤͐.̷͇̄-̵̦̉͘.̷̳͙͐ ̵̮̈́-̶̘͎͋̌-̶̬-̴̫̠̅ ̴̥̣̒-̸̙̊-̸̜̑̎ ̵̰̋̈́-̷̫͐·̴̧͊̾·̷͈̎̓-̶̹͐͜·̵̼͈̊ ̶͙̉.̶̖̮͛-̴̻̋̓.̸͆̏ͅ ̴͎̠̾.̴͗̓ͅ.̴̹̓͆͜.̴̟̌-̷͕̦̇-̴̬̫̾̇ ̶̪̮͛-̷̠̈́͂.̷̤̆̅ͅ ̵͎̌.̴͈͍̋̔-̶̤̾ ̵̮̯̅.̷͚̮͆͌.̴̖̠̌̊.̸̻̾ ̸͖̾̾-̴̺̿̚.̵̧̛̜-̵̻̻̈́̏.̷͔̻͋̓ ̸̪̊.̸̯͛̋.̴͚̤̚.̸̗̖̃͛-̸̼̳-̵̢̖̆͘_

* * *

 The burst of static punches through her brain like a speaker blowing out and she rears back, cracking her head solidly against something cold (Tsuna’s star ball, always, forever, _fuck_ ). The physical pain mixes with the mental and Tsunami hunches over for a long minute, holding the back of her skull and cursing with all the creativity she can muster.

Son of a _bitch_ , that hurt. The outside of her head more so than the inside, but her ears are still ringing from the noise she isn’t even sure she actually heard.

Tsunami feels a little bit like a rubber band thats been stretched out too far, all loose-jointed and gummy. The space behind her eyes is gently clipping through the roof of her mouth and her tongue feels like it should belong to someone else.

She’d gotten— well. She hadn’t really gotten much of anything other than a raging headache, but she was almost positive Gokudera was somewhere in southern Italy. Considering Italy was something like a hundred thousand square miles big, that really didn’t narrow it down by much. Also, she’s pretty sure she already fucking _knew_ that, thanks for _nothing._

“Not worth it,” she hisses, trying in vain to massage the ache out of her skull.

She stays curled on the floor for a while longer, waiting for the throbbing to subside. It takes her longer than she’d like to admit, but eventually she feels well enough to straighten out and float for a bit. Every part of her feels wiggly and lord is she tired, but she’s unwilling to go to bed with the bad taste of a failure still in her mouth. Gotta get back on the horse, and all that.

On the bright side, gravity isn’t real and the floor is wherever the hell she wants it to be. She can just sort of arbitrarily decide that she’s vertical instead of horizontal and skip the whole ‘standing up’ stage altogether.

Tsunami isn’t sure if the kickback was due to her reaching for someone out of her range, a faulty impression, or some other factor she hasn’t thought of. Maybe Gokudera was immune to spooky esper shenanigans. Maybe her connection with the Finding Planet is being interrupted by fucking birds. No one told her magic superpowers came with so many variables.

Tsunami isn’t afraid to admit that she’s kind of a dumbass, but school did actually manage to teach her a few lessons she’ll hold on to for the rest of her life. If the teacher doesn’t show up after fifteen minutes, you are legally allowed to leave. Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

Always isolate your variables.

“Oh, idiot!” Tsunami snaps her fingers and pivots sharply on her heel.

 _Iemitsu_. Maybe she doesn’t know a lot about him personally, what with him being a pathological liar and all, but he’s biologically her father and someone she’s at least spent more than a minute around. If she can get a lock on him, it will prove that familiarity helps her powers work. If she can’t, it’s likely just a range issue. Probably. Yes, she thinks, this is exactly how science works.

Breathing in deep (in for four, hold for seven, out for eight) she thinks back to the first time she saw star ball, big and bright and brimming with fire. The trauma of that whole day makes remembering the bright, hungry intensity of the flames easier to remember. Tsunami screws her eyes shut and summons up every interaction with Iemitsu she can remember, every time he’s kicked down the door singing love songs, every time he’s plucked her off the floor like a sack of feathers, every time he’s stared at her when he thought she wasn’t looking ( _she is always looking_ ) with something quiet and unreadable in his eyes—

* * *

  _h̶ ̴e̸'̴s̷ ̷l̶a̸t̸e̸,̵.̸ ̸-̶-̵ ̷.̴,̶.̵ ̸.̸͔͗,̶̥̞̅.̷͎̎̕;̵̬̇̕g̴̺͎̕o̷̥͋ͅd̸̘͑͂ ̴̥̪̿͑i̴̩͇̔̋t̸̮͊'̷̖͔̀̋s̴̥̄̽,̶̛͍̓/̷̭̌͗f̵u̵c̴k̸i̸n̸g̷ ̵c̴o̶l̴d̴_

* * *

 —Тахтамыгда, Аму́рская о́бласть, Russia.

How… how did she say that with her brain. Tsunami’s never understood a word of Russian in either one of her lives, but she’s suddenly filled with the absolute confidence that she could point to that exact town on a map with her eyes closed. She isn’t sure where in Tach… in wherever the hell she just thought Iemitsu is, exactly, but it’s a lot more information than she thought she’d get.

The static isn’t as sharp this time. It settles behind her throat like a pill that got stuck going down instead of a wardrum in her teeth and she swallows a few times to try and dislodge the feeling. She doesn’t need much of an adjustment period— the feelings she got from Iemitsu weren’t nearly as strong as the ones she’d gotten from Hana or Tsuna or even Hibari. She chalks it up to the distance because she is a good scientist who does science good.

Overall, Tsunami is pretty satisfied with her progress, especially considering she only just figured out she was a wizard earlier today. She needs a name, a face, and a fairly solid idea of who a person is. Her range is still unknown, but she’s pretty sure Russia is super fucking far away so she’s not too worried about it. Familiarity with a person correlates with the specificity of the location she gets.

“A name and a face,” she says out loud, stretching her arms above her head until she feels like she’s all the way back in her body. “I’m a Death Note with good hair.”

Tsunami closes her eyes in her Slipspace…

* * *

 ... and opens them again in her bedroom. There’s a short stretch of time as all her systems come back online where the sudden intensity of being able to feel with clarity almost knocks her on her proverbial ass. She always forgets how much less present all her emotions are when she’s under until they come back to smack her in the face. It’s the same shock of coming out of warm water on a cold day, sudden and unpleasant, and she catches herself wishing she could just stay under some days.

Her nose is itching something fierce.

She swipes a hand across her face to soothe it and… hm. She’s bleeding.

Tsunami crosses her eyes and looks down like she’ll somehow be able to see the blood on her own face and catches a glimpse of her shirt and, oh. Oh yeah. She’s bleeding a _lot._

Panic seems like the appropriate response for once, but every time she tries to muster up a shit the world reorients itself a couple degrees and she can’t remember what it is she was thinking about.

She almost eats shit when she gets up too fast and her skull tries to invert itself. Blinking the spots out of her eyes, she hobbles towards the bathroom at a careful trot because chakra exhaustion or whatever the fuck aside, blood is a _bitch_ to get out of white cotton. She’s gotta soak it and then slap down some vinegar or hydrogen peroxide and… something. She’s gotta… do something.

She’ll figure it out later. First, soak.

Tsunami has been shivering fully clothed under the shower spray for maybe ten minutes before she realizes she’s not supposed to soak herself, too, but hell. She was gonna have to scrub the blood off her face anyways, so really she’s just being eficient. Yeah, effishent. Efficient?

Words are, sticky. Her head feels a little heavy, like… like it’s full of gummy bears. Cotton candy. Got the munchies. Metaphors are escaping her.

There’s something she has to. Has to do? Clean, Nanamama said clean. She’s already cleaned her shirt and her body and her hair, she’s already halfway done.

Tsunami walks into two, maybe three walls on her way out of the bathroom, but it’s cool. It’s fine. It’s good.

* * *

 Sawada Tsunayoshi is having a weird day.

Day three of school without his sister is still uncomfortable, like losing a limb he never knew he had, but it’s better now that it’s nearly over. He manages to actually pay attention during class, even if he’s pretty sure nothing Aino-sensei’s said is going to stick in his head past the afternoon bell.

(It’s not like it matters. Hana’s just going to drill it all into his brain later whether he wants her to or not.)

Judging by the way conversation suddenly gets hushed whenever he walks into a room, the rumor mill hasn’t given up on what happened earlier that week, though Hana’s clearly been busy. The girl who sits at the table behind him walks up to them during lunch, clutching her skirt and avoiding eye contact.

“I wanted to say thank you,” she begins, face red and voice pitchy. “Yamada is a friend of mine. He told me about how you stood up for him.”

Tsuna’s first thought is that he has no idea who Yamada is or what Suzume (and is that her first name or her last name? Crap, he has no idea) is on about.

Tsuna’s second, third, and fourth thoughts are something along the lines of _‘oh my god a girl is talking to me’_ and it’s with much eye-rolling that Hana gently shoves him aside before he has a chance to make a fool of himself.

“It wasn’t any trouble,” she simpers, sugar-sweet. Tsuna side-eyes her a little for that because yes, actually, it was a lot of trouble. He almost got his face smashed in. Nami got _suspended_.

“Still.” Suzume hedges before bending into a quick bow. “Thanks. Please tell S...Sawada-chan, too.”

She’s out the door before either of them have a chance to respond. Tsuna rocks back on his heels, feeling a little flushed. He never used to notice girls before school, but now they are everywhere all the time and with the exception of Nami and Hana, being around them is weird and nerve-wracking. Is this how Nami feels all the time? Are they allergic to something?

“...Who’s Yamada?” he asks as an afterthought after a long stretch of silence. Hana pins him with a look of mild exasperation and pulls a notebook out of her bag, scribbling something down that he can’t quite read.

“The guy in the sandbox, remember?” Barely. Tsuna had spent maybe two seconds feeling bad for him when Ryoma had kicked his tower over and covered him in sand before Hana had gotten sassy and everything went pear-shaped. “You’re never going to make any friends if you don’t start paying attention to other people, y’know.”

“Why would I need other friends? I have you.”

“Shut up, don’t be weird.” She’s smiling, though, so she can’t be as annoyed as her tone suggests. “And that’s not the point. Dad says making connections is important for the future.”

“...I guess that makes sense?” It doesn’t make sense. Tsuna only talks to two people, three including Mama, and he’s doing just fine. Better than fine, actually, since the last time he tried to talk to someone else they knocked him over and got his sister kicked out of school for half the week.

Hana has enough experience teaching him math to know when he’s lying about understanding things and pauses in her scribbling, turning her full attention towards him.

“Think of it like this,” she starts. “It sucks when people say things about you that aren’t true, right?”

“Yeah.” The last 24 hours have taught him that much, at least.

“Well, it’s easy to believe stuff about someone if you don’t know anything else about them. That’s why I’ve been telling everybody what Ryoma did so they know that Nami didn’t just go crazy all of the sudden.”

“...And?” Tsuna asks, because he knows there’s more to this than Hana’s telling him.

There’s always more. Hana is really, really smart. Smarter than him, for sure. He thinks she may be smarter than his sister, too, because for all the big words and hard ideas Nami talks about, she’s kind of a big dumb idiot who gets lost in her head too much to do anything with all the stuff she knows.

“... _And,_ if everyone starts talking about Ryoma, they’ll all find out how many people he’s been mean to and everybody will know that he had it coming. And then nobody will want to talk to him or be his friend and he’ll die alone in rags watching us, his sworn mortal enemies, rule his toppled empire _._ ”

...or maybe that’s a good thing, and Hana does too much. She’s breathing a little hard by the end of her rant, eyes laser-focused on some point he can’t see.

“This is just ‘cause he called your socks ugly that one time, isn’t it?”

“Tsuna, he pushed us! There was sand on my skirt! Nami got suspended!” Hana admonishes, cheeks flushed. “My socks have nothing to do with it!”

Tsuna doesn’t even try to stifle his snorts and spends the rest of lunch enduring Hana’s huffing and hair-flipping.

* * *

 Three hours and a pencil to the ribs later, Tsuna walks in his front door and immediately knows something is wrong.

“I’m home!” he calls. He barely has his shoes off before Nami is on him. Her weird pupils are blown so wide he almost can’t see the orange of her eyes and she’s doing that thing where she makes an uncomfortable amount of eye contact, only it kind of feels like she’s doing it because she’s forgotten how to blink?

“Hi, how was your day!” It comes out too fast and high to be a question and Tsuna frowns at her, taking in her twisting hands and the way she is standing on her toes, jittering even as she stands. There are about fourteen different clips in her hair and one of her socks is about to give up the ghost and fall off her foot entirely. He makes a cautious move towards the stairs and her hand shoots out like lighting to pinch the hem of his shirt like he’s going to run off without her.

Her sleeves look… weirdly damp. He hopes she didn’t fall asleep and drool on them or something, that’d be gross.

“I’m gonna go do my worksheets, Mama!” He calls over his shoulder. Mama is still slipping out of her shoes and waves him off with a smile bright with pride at his diligence. Tsuna has absolutely no intention of doing his worksheets for the next few hours if at all, but she doesn’t need to know that.

“If you finish up by dinner, I’ll make you something special, alright?”

Tsuna brightens. Faking being done with worksheets is _easy._

“Hi Mama, welcome home, I love you, see you later!” Nami is dragging him up the staircase almost before she is done, stumbling over the ninth step in her haste to reach the top and nearly taking him down with her. She is a lot more careful after that.

Tsuna’s not sure what’s got his sister in a tizzy this time, but whatever it is he hopes she gets a handle on it before she accidentally sends him through a window next or something.

“I’m coming up there to check on your cleaning the minute dinner is over, young lady, so you better have made some progress!” Mama calls up the stairs after them, warning clear in her voice.

Once they’re back in the room, Tsuna slips his bag off his shoulder and moves to the closet to pick out something more comfortable than his uniform. Nami takes a running leap at his bed and lands with a bounce, ankles crossing and uncrossing as she watches him.

“So!” she prods, eyes still wide. “Your day! How did it go!”

“Fine, I guess? Aino-sensei had us pick our presentation groups today, and I’m s’posed to tell you you’re with Hana and me.” He pulls out a soft green hoodie and shrugs it on, feeling a thousand times more settled. Behind him, Nami makes a whiny noise in her throat.

“I hate presentations,” she sighs. Tsuna nods, agreeing wholeheartedly.

“Maybe Hana will do all the talking?” He offers, tugging on some sweatpants.

“Mm, that’d be nice. Don’t like doin’ that. Talking, I mean, It’s like… I need that air to breathe. Can’t… talkin’, wastin’ it.”

Tsuna pauses. He peers a little harder into the closet.

“...Nami, why’s there shampoo in here?”

“It was dirty.”

“...The shampoo or the closet?”

“Yes!” He turns to look at her, poleaxed. Her legs are swinging in wide figure eights and she’s swaying in place, neon eyes darting around like she can’t focus.

“Are you okay?” He asks, a little concerned. There’s a fine line between Nami in a good mood and Nami in a panic and Tsuna can’t quite pin down which side she’s falling on right now. She opens her mouth to answer, hesitates, and then closes it again.

“Yes? Maybe. I’m a little…” Nami gestures wildly at her entire body and shrugs like that explains anything at all, which it doesn’t. “Just. I dunno, havin’ a day. Bein’ alive. I cleaned _everything._ ”

“Everything,” he repeats, a sinking feeling in his chest. He glances over to the desk. It’s the first time he’s seen it clean in a long time, true, but it’s… is that flour? “Is that _flour?_ ”

“No!” She rears back, affronted. “It’s baby powder! Desk smelled kinda funny. I fixed it. B’sides, flour’s combustible. Can’t be havin’ that around here, you’re flameo hotman. Burn the whole dang house down.”

Tsuna can only ogle slightly slack jawed as his sister merrily babbles away, uncaring that this is maybe the most he’s ever heard her talk in his life. He loves his sister a lot, a _whole lot_ , but sometimes holding a conversation with her feels like pulling teeth.

“... and I scrubbed the whole bathroom, I picked up all the shit— the stuff, I meant stuff, all the stuff on the floor, the stuff in the bathroom, did the laundry to get all the blood out, cleaned under the bed, and oh! I found _so many_ hair clips, Ts’na-fish, so many, you gotta put some on, they’re so cute!”

“I— Nami _get off_ , I don’t want your stupid hair clips— wait, hang on, blood? What?”

“No, shh, don’ worry ‘bout it. It’s fine, magic did it.” He stares at her, incredulous. She stares back, vacant like she is during class or when someone starts talking about sports, before her eyes light back up and she leans forward so fast she almost falls off the bed. Her irises burn a vivid orange behind the eclipse of her pupils. “BLEACH. Bleach did it, it was the. Fumes. Lotta fumes. I cleaned _everything._ ”

Tsunami is a great liar when she’s calm. Her words come out even, her body language is sincere, and her excuses are believable if not just reimaginings of the truth. If Tsuna wasn’t actually present for half the shenanigans she lies about, he would never know the difference.

Tsunami in a panic is a human disaster and he’s actually a little offended she’d even try to pull one over on him.

Tsuna doesn’t know if she really did hit her head or if she’s just finally snapped from nerves. Still, she’s not making any sense and she changes the subject every time he tries to ask what happened, so he decides to leave it alone for now. For the next two hours leading up to dinner, he endures her rambling and, in a stunning role reversal, saves her from cracking her head open on the floor no less than four times. As it turns out, shampoo in the closet is far from the only thing Nami’s misplaced in the name of ‘cleaning’.

(One weird dinner and a tense review from Nana later, Tsunami sits doubled over in their bedroom with her head in between her knees. Her skull feels like is about to split open, but she figures it’s probably an improvement over cotton candy gummy bears and whatever other campy bullshit she was ranting about earlier.

‘ _Note to self_ ,’ she thinks grimly, eyes squeezed shut against the suddenly unendurably bright light of her bedside lamp. ‘ _GPS has limits._ ’

God, her whole family probably thinks she’s on drugs at age seven.)

* * *

 On the bright side, her unexpected foray into short-circuiting her brain knocks her out pretty fast and she’s feeling as well-rested as she ever does, which is not at all.

On the downside, she’s apparently stepped sideways through dimensions and ended up in the Twilight Zone.

Tsunami had been expecting some kind of… social backlash, to say the least, on her first day back at school. Popularity was never one of her priorities on account of the whole ‘children are frightful monsters’ thing and her lack of energy or will to make friends outside of her circle didn’t help. She’d fully expected to show up to class to indifference at best and unflattering gossip at worst, but upon arriving the first morning after her suspension she gets...well.

A very sharp uptick in people who want to be her friend, for one.

“Good morning, Sawada-chan,” A girl she’s never talked to in her life greets her outside the gate, smiling shyly before scurrying inside.

The three hamsters who run her brain spin out in their little wheels and Tsunami can’t do anything but gape after her. People don’t talk to her. She’s the awkward outsider with the weird eyes who sleeps during class and beats up kids on the playground and she’s okay with that. She likes it, even! Tsunami is the worst person ever at holding a conversation, let alone with a bunch of grade-schoolers she can barely relate to.

“What did you do,” she turns to Hana, slightly behind her and looking awfully smug.

“What makes you think _I_ did anything?” Hana sniffs, brushing past her and through the gate. “Maybe she just likes you.”

When two more girls and a group of boys from the soccer club also nod to her on the way to classroom, Tsunami turns on her brother instead.

“ _Tsuna what did she do._ ”

He gives a half-hearted little shrug, hands raised in surrender. He’d gotten a greeting or two himself and Tsunami was caught between pride and abject terror.

“I don’t know, she’s been saying weird stuff to people ever since you left—”

“ _Hey!_ Don’t make it sound like I’ve been talking bad about her behind her back—”

“What, no! I just, I only mean you’ve been, uh, _telling_ people things.”

Tsunami takes a measured breath and very pointedly does not start massaging her temples.

“Hana, please,” she whines. “I’m not awake enough for this.”

Hana rolls her eyes and doesn’t even have the grace to look ashamed of herself for all the terrible things Tsunami knows she’s been up to during her three-day absence.

“People had some misconceptions about what happened with Ryoma. I corrected them. You’re _welcome_.” She punctuates this with a friendly poke to the shoulder, which does actually hurt kind of a lot because Hana has no concept of doing things in moderation. “You act like people being nice to you is the end of the world.”

“...hrgh.” Tsunami snipes back eloquently, because Hana going around the school telling everyone she isn’t actually just some spontaneous delinquent is sweet actually and makes her feel all fuzzy inside. It’s just… she feels like she’s dodging consequences, maybe? Like, it’s all well and good that everyone knows what an asshole Tatsuzo Ryoma is but she absolutely did kick him in the ribs. That’s a thing that happened.

When she voices this, Tsuna’s glare snaps to her like a whip. Tsunami is a big girl and the Alpha Twin besides, so she’ll deny the way her palms go clammy till the day she dies. Her baby brother is so passive most of the time it’s always a little bracing to remember that he’s kind of got a temper.

“You said you were gonna stop wallowing,” he reminds her sharply.

“You got suspended for three days, idiot. I’d hardly call that dodging consequences.” Hana adds, poking her in the shoulder again.

“Stop worrying about it.”

“Get over it.”

“...It’s super unfair when you two gang up on me, y’know,” Tsunami sighs. As a naturally affectionate person, she thanks them for their concern the best way she knows how and ducks in for a group hug. Tsuna’s too used to her barnacle ways to offer protest, but Hana only puts up with it for a few seconds before she digs her fingers into Tsunami’s ribs.

The friendly hallway hellos aren’t the end of it. Things escalate slowly through the day.

“Sawada-chan, d-do you want one of my onigiri?” Tsunami freezes, a chunk of karaage halfway to her open mouth. It’s Suzume, who Tsunami still cannot hold a conversation with for a myriad of reasons that include not being sure if that’s actually her name and just sort of being a big antisocial slug.

“Uh,” Tsunami stalls, lowering her chicken back into the box with cautious care. Hana kicks her under the table. “I mean, uh, yes? Do you… want to trade for karaage?”

Suzume goes back to her friends with bright red ears, one chicken chunk richer.

“Are you a wizard?” Tsunami asks Hana seriously, nibbling at her spoils. God, there’s _salmon_ in this, this is the best day of her life.

During recess, which all three of them spend inside for obvious reasons, a vaguely familiar boy with fluffy black hair pokes into the classroom and wordlessly deposits three full-sized candy bars on their desks. He makes direct eye contact with each of them in turn, nods solemnly, and walks out the door as suddenly as he’d come in.

Tsunami feels like she’s been visited by one of santa’s elves.

“What,” Tsuna says, eyeing the chocolate like it’s going to explode. It’s a valid question that Tsunami does not care about in the least and she’s already unwrapped hers and is mid-chew by the time Hana finds her voice enough to explain. God, she loves chocolate. Especially free chocolate.

“ _That’s_ Yamada.”

Oh, the sandbox kid. Tsunami’s mouth is too full of gooey goodness to say anything, but she hopes her answering hum is enough to convey that she would now die for Yamada in a heartbeat. He’s cute and shorter than her and has provided her with candy. He’s met all her standards.

“I really only meant to tell everyone Ryoma was mean, you know.” Hana muses, staring down at her candy bar. “I didn’t think they’d all start assuming you were _cool._ ”

“I am cool,” Tsunami says, licking her fingers clean because she’s not a fucking animal. Tsuna makes a sound of disgust so it’s not only her right, but her _duty_ to wipe her hands on his shirt.

After lunch, Aino-sensei tells them all to form groups and puzzle out some math worksheets for a few minutes. Almost immediately, two boys she was previously only peripherally aware existed approach her desk.

 _‘Please have food,’_ she thinks hopefully.

“You’re Sawada, right? Do you wanna join our group?”

“I’m already with Tsuna and Hana, sorry,” she declines, disappointed despite herself. Clearly, today has spoiled her rotten. “I’d... be happy to help if you have questions, though?” she adds, hoping to balance out her karma.

Offering feels a little pretentious, but Tsunami fought her way all the way up to AP Calculus at one point. She wasn’t, like, _good_ at it, but elementary school multiplication wasn’t shit in comparison. Also, she has a documented weakness for puppy eyes and soft cheeks and the short kid with the glasses is in possession of both.

Their names are Ueda and Tsukuda and it turns out they are arguably worse at math than Tsuna is. After the third time the two of them break off from their third to pester her group for answers, Tsunami gives up and tells them to pull some chairs over. Her brother, for his part, just seems happy he’s not bearing the full brunt of her and Hana on his own for once.

She’s worried for a minute that they’ll get in trouble for double-grouping but Aino-sensei looks so honestly pleased that the antisocial kids are finally socializing that she figures it’s fine.

Ueda and Tsukuda introduce their third, a freckled girl in braids named Mei, and settle in for what’s feeling more and more like an impromptu tutoring session.

“No, Ueda-kun, stop, regrouping is only helpful when you’re multiplying by single digits. Just do a box.” She leans over and taps his pencil out of the way with her own, sketching in a square divided into fourths. Hana looks up from much further down her worksheet, squinting suspiciously.

“Hold it, what’s a box? Is that a real thing or another one of your weird shortcuts?”

“All my shortcuts are real, thanks. Name _one_ time they haven’t worked.” Hana can’t. Tsunami does math like an asshole, but her grades in the subject are flawless and they all know it.

“Boxes?” Tsukuda reminds. She likes Tsukuda, actually. He’s pretty chill and doesn’t bother her for answers until he’s tried a problem himself, unlike Ueda who encounters one single speed bump and gives the whole thing up. Mei keeps up well enough, but has a bad habit of dropping numbers.

She tucks her hair behind her ears so it doesn’t drag over the papers and raps her pencil sharply against the desk to get Ueda’s attention again.

“So, the problem is 85 x 34. That’s four numbers, so you want four squares. 85 is 80 and 5, so you put that along the top here,” she scribbles the numbers along the outside edge of the top two boxes, “and 34, 30 and 4, along the side.”

She taps the inside of the top left box. “Okay, so here’s where the 80 and the 30 intersect, see? 8 times 3 is?”

“24?” It takes Ueda a minute, but he gets there. Tsunami nods and writes it in the box.

“Right. Now drop the zeroes,” 24 becomes 2400, “and go to the next box. 8 times 4?”

“32.” Tsukuda’s already catching on to the pattern and starts filling in the rest of the boxes he’s drawn in on his own sheet. “And then drop the zeroes again?”

“Yeah. Same thing on the bottom row. 5 times 3—”

“15,” Tsuna says confidently. He still has to manually count out his times tables sometimes because numbers are as flighty to him as historical dates are to her, but he has his twos and fives down pat.

“—and drop the zeroes again for—”

“150. And the next one doesn’t have any zeroes to drop so it’s just 20.” Mei concludes, crowding in to watch her write. “So what now?”

“Now you just add up all the numbers in the box,” Tsunami writes them down in a neat little line and totals them up to 2890 with a flourish. “And that’s the answer.” She sits back down in her own chair and looks from face to face, hoping to see something like comprehension there. Teaching is hardly her strong suit, but hopefully she did well enough that everyone will stop bothering her and she can go back to daydreaming until lunch.

“You sleep through class every day, I watch you do it.” Hana accuses, baffled. “Where did you even learn this?”

“I’m naturally gifted,” Tsunami sniffs, tossing her hair over her shoulder imperiously. It misses Tsuna’s face by centimeters. It’s thick and weighty enough that catching a face-full of it can cause mild damage, something they’ve both found out through various incidents. “Sorry, Tsuna-fish.”

“You’re actually really chill, Sawada-chan!” Ueda laughs. “I always thought you were kinda prissy, but I guess Hana was right— ow!”

Tsukuda punches Ueda in the arm at the same time Mei slams her foot into his shin and Tsunami can only watch in affronted silence as he weathers a multi-pronged scolding.

“Don’t be mean to Nami!” Tsuna defends with a scowl. Ueda rubs his head and laughs nervously, shoulders hunching.

Ugh, feelings.

“Do I really come off as prissy?” she asks Hana quietly, a little chastened.

It’s not like she doesn’t see where they’re coming from. Tsunami goes out of her way not to talk to anyone outside her immediate social circle and tends not to look directly at people so her eyes don’t freak them out. They aren’t even wrong about the prissy part— she _does_ look down on people a lot. Maybe it’s because she’s secretly almost two decades older than all of them and starving for actual age-appropriate social contact, but none of them know that.

Hana knocks their shoes together in a silent show of support.

“No, Ueda’s just an idiot. You’re fine.”

“She’s right, I’m super dumb! Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude or nothin’.” Ueda ducks his head. Tsunami shifts in her seat uncomfortably.

“No, you’re okay. I know I don’t, um. Talk all that much. I’m kind of awkward?” She offers apologetically. Admitting that you’re a cagey weirdo out loud fucking sucks and the slow full-face blush she can feel creeping up her doesn’t help. Her hands come up to twirl her hair around her finger out of nervous habit.

“Aw,” Mei coos. “You’re so cute, Sawada-chan. Like a little doll.”

 _‘Thank you, I try really hard,’_ she doesn’t say, partly because that’s a weird thing to admit to and partly because Mouth.exe machine broke. Come back later. Taking compliments well isn’t one of her DM-approved character traits.

“Hng,” she replies instead and ducks behind her curtain of hair, brick red.

Tsuna laughs at her. She crushes his foot under her shoe.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> poking me on tumblr about updates is 900% more effective than putting a gun to my head: an essay


End file.
